THE LAND 
 
 OF 
 
 PIP \'A\ WINKLE 
 
!1 
 
THE LAND 
 
 RIP VAN WINKLE 
 
 A TOUR THROUGH THE ROMANTIC PARTS OF 
 THE CATSKILLS 
 
 ITS LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS 
 
 A. E. P. SEARING 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 JOSEPH LAUBER, CHARLES VOLKMAR, AND OTHERS 
 
 ENGRAVED BY E. HEINEMANN 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 iljE ^nichcrboclur |puss 
 1885 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 E. HEINEMANN 
 1S84 ' 
 
 By XraasfsT 
 
 JAN2S aOB 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York 
 
' Should yoji ask me wkejtce these stories, 
 ' Whence tJiese legends and traditions, 
 % ^ -;:- -f:- * 
 
 ' I sJioidd ajiswer, I should tell yon : 
 ■ ' From the forests and the prairies, 
 
 -X- -::- ■;{- -Jf % 
 
 ' From the mountains, moors, ajidfenlands, 
 ' Where the heron, the shuh-shtih-gah, 
 ' Feeds among the reeds and rushes. 
 ' / repeat them as I heard themr 
 ' From the lips of Nawadaha, 
 ' The musician, the sweet sijiger.' 
 Should you ask where Nawadaha 
 Foiuid these songs, so zvild and wayward. 
 Found these legends and traditions, 
 I should answer, I should tell you, : 
 ' In the birds -nests of the forest, 
 ' In the lodges of the beaver, 
 
 * In the hoof prints of the bison, 
 
 * In the eyry of the eagle! ' " Longfellow. 
 
Panorama from the Ov 
 
I ^lUL 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Land of Rip Van Winkle 
 
 The Pirates' TrEx\sure 
 
 The Birth of the Kaaterskill 
 
 Revolutionary Captivities 
 
 Haidoni and the Vampyres 
 
 The Grot Vly's Victim 
 
 The Legend of Rip Van Winkle 
 
 Page 
 I 
 
 4 
 50 
 
 65 
 
 96 
 
 112 
 
 129 
 
 IX 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Panorama from the Overlook 
 
 On Deck of Steamer 
 
 Capt. Ktdd and Gov. Fletcher 
 
 Old Woollen Mill at Palenville 
 
 View from Prospect Rock — Kaaterskill Falls 
 
 Fawn's Leap 
 
 View from the Toll-House at Palenville 
 On the Esopus, near Phcenicia 
 
 On Catskill Creek 
 
 Rip Van Winkle House .... 
 
 The Old German 
 
 View from North Mountain . 
 
 The Dude 
 
 On the Road from Kaaterskill Hotel 
 View from Sunset Rock .... 
 
 Alligator Rock 
 
 The Lakes 
 
 Sheltering Rock 
 
 In Cauterskill Clove, after Rain 
 Artist Rock and Palenville Overlook 
 Mary's Glen, near Laurel House 
 On Top of Haines' Falls . 
 Dripping Rock .... 
 Haines' Falls .... 
 Artist Grotto .... 
 The Cascades of Haines' Falls 
 
 xi 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 3 
 5 
 
 15 
 17 
 
 21 
 27 
 29 
 
 31 
 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 35 
 1>7 
 38 
 
 39 
 40 
 
 41 
 42 
 
 43 
 45 
 46 
 
 47 
 48 
 
 49 
 
Xll 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIONS. 
 
 Land Slide on Top of Cauterskill Clove 
 
 Belle Falls at Palenville 
 
 Delaware Valley 
 
 The Maid in Kaaterskill Fall 
 
 George Hall's House 
 
 Dog's Hole, Palenville 
 
 Profile Rock .... 
 
 Climbing up — Palenville Overlook 
 
 Views in Stony Clove 
 
 Gloomy Pool Beyond the Notch 
 
 Farm-House near Phcenicia 
 
 Dominie's Face .... 
 
 Echo Lake 
 
 Vampyre's Den, and Death of Stone Giant 
 
 Pilgrim's Pass .... 
 
 Turtle Rock .... 
 
 Before Old Mount House 
 
 Styles Gorge and Pulpit Rock 
 
 Poet's Bench — Overlook . 
 
 Lover's Retreat — Overlook . 
 
 Bowling 
 
 Overlook Playground 
 
 Boy Artist 
 
 Black Chasm .... 
 Terrace Fall, Plattekill 
 The Hell Hole .... 
 Plattekill Clove 
 
 51 
 
 53 
 57 
 59 
 65 
 67 
 
 75 
 83 
 89 
 93 
 
 91 
 93 
 94 
 96 
 
 99 
 100 
 
 lOI 
 
 102 
 103 
 104 
 105 
 106 
 107 
 108 
 109 
 1 10 
 III 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 It was in September, not very long ago, that seven wise peo- 
 ple resolved to leave the parching, blistering heat that was des- 
 olating New York — that hottest of cities — and to sail away to seek 
 a land of cool breezes and sweet odors. Moreover, it must be 
 some region with an atmosphere of romance to suit the Literary 
 Fellow ; it must furnish specimens for the Botanical Member of the 
 expedition, and sketching ground for the Artist. 
 
 The Catskills, of course ! 
 
 There were Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler, of Washington Square — 
 she a pretty, well-bred woman of no particular age; he — well, he is 
 Mrs. Schuyler's elderly husband. Then there was that pretty Miss 
 Perkins, whose lance was always poised awaidng the uncovering 
 of some luckless wight's weak or wicked spot, when ping ! it flew 
 straight to the vital point, and the victim was generally content to 
 retreat and nurse his wound. As for the third lady of the party, 
 it was enough for her that she was known as " that elegant Miss 
 Rutherford," and her principal occupation was to go about attend- 
 ing to the wounded that pretty Polly Perkins left in the rear. The 
 person most often in need of such consolation was Captain Old- 
 bore, who had started on this trip with a goodly store of facts 
 wherewith to instruct his fellow-travellers ; practical, verified 
 history those facts were, and he did not propose to allow the Artist 
 
2 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 or the Literary Fellow to spoil them with a false glamour of romance. 
 His theory was that history was in some sort a sacred charge, 
 and it was every man's duty to keep fiction from usurping its 
 place. Traditions were pernicious till authenticated, and the 
 man most to be respected was the conscientious, truth-seeking 
 antiquary. 
 
 Now Miss Polly Perkins cherished an ill-concealed contempt 
 for such dry-as-dust reminiscence, and had a great weakness for 
 the tales of by-gone days that John Grant, the Literary Fellow, had 
 always at hand. 
 
 So one morning they all sailed away on the deck of a day- 
 boat for Catskill. For a while the talk was all of routes and hotels 
 until a decision was at last reached as to how much time to give to 
 each part of the mountains. Then ensued a roll-call of baskets 
 and umbrellas and sketching tools and other impedimenta. At last 
 they settled themselves down to find they were approaching the 
 Highlands, where a pulsing haze of noon-day heat covered those 
 towering hillsides. 
 
 " How beautiful ! " murmured Miss Rutherford. 
 
 " Light 's too strong," objected the Artist. " You should see 
 them by moonlight, or later in the day, or in the early morning. 
 They need a slanting light on them, they bear no shadows now," 
 and with a comprehensive wave of his hand he dashed them out of 
 the canvas, and painted them in over again. 
 
 Then the Literary Fellow took it up. 
 
 " And yet they need a haze over them ; they are never perfect 
 without that characteristic mantle. They are loveliest in October, 
 when Lidian summer glorifies them ; then they always remind me 
 of Captain Kidd, and those old legends." 
 
 " Yes ? " interrogated Miss Rutherford; " I did not know the 
 doughty old fellow's ghost prowled about here." 
 
n 
 
 LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 " Oh ! but he did come here," broke in the Artist. " Now, no 
 doubt John there has a yarn about it." 
 
 The person thus referred to sat meditatively nursing his cane, 
 with a far-away look in his eyes that promised a story. Miss Polly 
 sat apart a little, where the wind was blowing- her ribbons and 
 
 ON DECK OF STEAMER. 
 
 love-locks all about her face. Some of the conversation had reached 
 her ears, for at this point she left her seat, casting a side-glance at 
 Captain Oldbore, to make sure that he would not disturb the prom- 
 ised tale with cynical criticism. But there was no need for fear ; 
 the old gentleman was deeply engaged at the moment with his his- 
 torical facts, possibly " chewing a cud of erudite mistake " about 
 
4 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Revolutionary affairs. All things looked encouraging as she came 
 forward, singing sofdy : 
 
 " Oh, my name was Captain Kidd, as I sail'd, as I saild ! " 
 
 " Do you know the rest of it ? " asks the Literary Fellow, and 
 she finishes : \ 
 
 " Oh, my name was Captain Kidd, as I sail'd, as I sail'd •, 
 Oh, my name was Captain Kidd as I sail'd. 
 My sinful footsteps slid ; God's law they did forbid ; 
 But still wickedly I did, as I sail'd. 
 
 " I 'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd, when I sail'd ; 
 I 'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd ; 
 I 'd a Bible in my hand, by my father's great command, 
 And I sunk it in the sand, when I sail'd. 
 
 "I spied three ships of France as I sail'd, as I sail'd ; 
 I spied three ships of France as I sail'd ; 
 I spied three ships of France ; to them I did advance, 
 And took them all by chance, as I sail'd. 
 
 " I 'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd, as I sail'd ; 
 I 'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd ; 
 I 'd dollars manifold, and riches uncontrolled, 
 And by these I lost my soul, as I sail'd." 
 
 Mr. Grant fixed his gaze on the passing shore as if reading his 
 legend on the green slopes, and told the story given below. After- 
 ward it was published in the Era, and furnished food for many a 
 Captain Oldbore's historical rage. I give it as it was given to the 
 Era, 
 
 THE PIRATE'S TREASURE. 
 
 In one of the old colonial mansions of New York, facingf on 
 the Battery, two men sat at a table drinking. The firelight, flaring 
 up about the great log in the chimney, cast fitful gleams on their 
 differing faces. The elder of the two, Colonel Fletcher, ex-Gov- 
 ernor of the province of New York, was a man past middle life, 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 5 
 
 thin and dry, with a sharp-cut, beardless countenance, in . which 
 were set two httle bead-Hke eyes that seemed ever wandering in 
 search of evil things. Their expression belied all the suavity of the 
 man's face and manner ; they told you that their owner was cog- 
 nizant of all your weakness, and perhaps of many of your pecca- 
 dilloes, should you conduct yourself never so discreetly, and at 
 some unwary moment you might find yourself in his unmerciful 
 clutches. His powdered peruke was arranged with the same fas- 
 tidious care that evinced itself in the disposition of the rich lace 
 
 CAPT KIDD AND GOV. ULILHER. 
 
 framing his slender, aristocratic hands. His entire person bespoke 
 -a taste and elegance hardly removed from foppery, from his red 
 velvet coat, parting in front to reveal the deep lace frill on his 
 tosom, to the gold buckles on his shoes and at his knees. His 
 companion was a man of quite another stamp, and something in 
 his attitude as he sat with crossed knees and back half turned, 
 looking toward his friend only when he spoke, betokened a certain 
 •scorn of Fletcher's foppery and ill-concealed meanness. The older 
 
6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 man was leaning forward with folded arms resting on the polished 
 mahogany of the table, keenly eying the large bulk of his guest, 
 as if weighing the truth of the marvellous tale he had just heard. 
 
 Of tall and finely developed figure, our hero was clothed in 
 some dun-colored vesture, without ornament save his decorated 
 sword of Moorish make, and the sash which held it at his waist. 
 This was of a deep-red color, and of soft silken mesh, with two 
 tassels at the end. His hair was brown and unpowdered, contrary 
 to the prevailing fashion, and cropped closely to his head, where 
 it clung in little rings. He wore long mustachios, curling up at 
 the ends like a Spaniard's, and his complexion was swarthy as if 
 browned by foreign suns, while his eyes of light gray had the ab- 
 sent unseeing expression that so often characterizes a person of 
 minute observation. Suddenly turning to his companion, he let 
 his fist come down on the table, so that the glasses rung, swearing 
 a round oath, and concluding his malediction in some foreign 
 tongue. 
 
 o 
 
 " 1 tell ye, 't is a mighty treasure," he went on in tones of sup- 
 pressed excitement, " a Moorish merchantman bound home from 
 India, and richly laden, as ye may guess, with what ye already 
 know of such-like cargoes ! " 
 
 At this insinuation Colonel Fletcher stirred uneasily, and re- 
 moving his eyes from the swarthy face now turned to him, gazed 
 into the fire. Whether he saw there visions of eold and silver 
 and precious stuffs, or some new plan to help him out of his diffi- 
 cult situation, I do not know, but presently he stole a sly glance at 
 the now averted face before him. 
 
 " But, Bellomont ," he said softly. 
 
 The eyes flashed round in sovereign contempt. " A fig for your 
 Bellomont ! I snap my fingers ! Those six fine rubies I sent to her 
 ladyship, the countess, have whetted his appetite, and what though 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 7 
 
 he thundered and fumed and cast me in prison ? Here I am, out 
 on some flimsy pardon, and those pretty baubles in his wife's jewel- 
 casket have changed my title from 'pirate' to 'privateer in His Ma- 
 jesty's service.' And yet I tell ye he '11 scarce dare to let me pass 
 in openly with my sloop-loads of treasure, much less let me bring 
 that great ship here in open sight. That troublesome make- mischief 
 of a Robert Livingstone too — may the Devil fly away with him! — is 
 growing suspicious, and must needs come posting down from his 
 manor to see what the Earl of Bellomont means by liberating me. 
 But leave that to me. I 've a trap for his fine loyal principles ! 
 All I want of you is a well-rigged sloop and twenty sailors to go 
 down the coast with me where my bulky prize rides at anchor, 
 ^nd help fetch away the treasure. You '11 be well paid for 't, 
 man ! " 
 
 " Captain Kidd," said the older man, rising from his chair and 
 straightening his tall, spare figure, " I accept your offer and will sign 
 the contract. My remuneration should be heavy, for you well 
 know the risk I run under the new laws against harboring pirates, 
 should you be convicted of so grave an offence. I make this 
 agreement with ' His Majesty's privateersman,' " and he made an 
 obeisance before the bold adventurer. 
 
 " Done ! " cried the sailor, starting up, and setting down his 
 glass so emphatically that it shivered to atoms on the table. " Have 
 your craft off Broecklyn, near the Wallabogt, at the first ebb-tide 
 on Monday next " 
 
 " But the girl," broke in Colonel Fletcher, " I — I can't engage 
 to keep her on account of — of my lady." 
 
 The captain's brow darkened. " Why not, man ? She 's as 
 honest a woman as treads the earth, and I tell ye she 's no man's 
 wife ! I mean to marry her myself, but how can I prove the lie 
 on that infernal villian of a Balldridge in time to get off on my 
 
8 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 cruise next month ? He says she 's a slave, and that he bought her, 
 and I say he Hes ! She 's a Spaniard, and as white as you are, 
 and he stole her from a ship they took in the South Seas. I want 
 to keep her safe from him till I come back from this one more 
 venture." 
 
 Colonel Fletcher shrugged his shoulders and replied only : "It 
 is a simple thing to find asylum here. As for me, my wife likes 
 not a comely maid about the house." 
 
 " Lest she be beguiled of your fine person ? " sneered Kidd ; 
 " well, let be, I '11 not trouble you, unwilling to guard that treas- 
 ure, lest I find it but ill-kept against my return." 
 
 So saying, he stalked out, with footfalls resounding on the 
 oaken floor, and his form was soon lost in the darkness of the 
 street. What business he next applied himself to appears in the 
 fraofment of an old document, beincr a letter from the Earl of Bello- 
 mont to the Board of Trade in the mother country. 
 
 " I forgot in my last letter to their Lordships to acquaint them 
 with an arch piece of villainy done by that rogue of a chaplain 
 whom I have since dismissed. He goes to the Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor and desires him to sign a blank marriage license, pretending 
 the parties thereto wish to keep their names concealed. The 
 Lieutenant-Governor, suspecting mischief, refuses to do this, anT 
 my chaplain goes away. Afterward my good man brings anothei 
 license, containing the names of Captain William Kidd and Isabella 
 del Puerto, who has come, it seems, in his ship from the South 
 Seas, Since then it transpires that he took her forcibly from 
 Balldridge, the pirate, who says he bought her as a slave, and took 
 her for a wife. Kidd, however, with his usual villainy, abducted 
 her, and she is hidden past finding, for Kidd swore he would give 
 up his life sooner than disclose her whereabouts." The letter is 
 dated some time after Kidd's apprehension and confinement, on 
 his return from his projected expedition just alluded to. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 9 
 
 At noon on the following Monday a smart little craft was 
 standing on and off shore near the Wallabogt, where soon ap- 
 peared a sloop bearing down toward her. Some signals were 
 exchanged, and the two vessels bore away to Sandy Hook 
 and disappeared from sight of shore. Not many days after they 
 returned heavily laden, and to the excitement and intense curiosity 
 of the New Amsterdamers waiting on the Battery for their landing, 
 passed on ^up the river, hugging the west shore, as if to baffle 
 curious eyes. Farther up the river they cast anchor. 
 
 Just at nightfall a boat put off from one of them, and in a litde 
 while Captain Kidd was striding unobserved through the town, 
 until he reached a place where streets converged and got them- 
 selves into a hopeless snarl. Here, turning a sharp corner, he 
 ran bump against a man, who cried : "What, ho ! my bold cap- 
 tain, well met!" and Colonel Fletcher pushed him about and 
 gazed inquiringly into his face. 
 
 " Greeting to you — greeting ! " cried the captain impatiently. 
 " Let me pass! " and brushing off the detaining hand, he hurried 
 on with a curse at this untoward meeting. 
 
 " A — ah ! " sofdy said the wily Fletcher, " so that is the game! 
 He takes his bird up river with the gold ! " 
 
 Kidd stopped at last before a low door- way, and gave a gentle 
 rat-tat with the big brass knocker. The house was a small one, 
 standing like most of the houses of that time with its gable-end to 
 the street, and the entrance was through a peaked-roofed stoop, 
 on each side of which were benches, where the good burghers 
 were wont to sit of a summer evening and smoke the pipe of 
 peaceful domesticity. 
 
 As our hero waited and listened for an answer to his summons, 
 the step of a passer caused him to draw back in the shadow. 
 While he waited, the man came opposite to him and he recognized 
 
lo THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 the gait and figure of the hated Balldridge. At the same instant 
 a lighter step in the hallway caused his heart to leap up, for Ball- 
 dridge had paused there looking up at the house. What if the 
 door should open and a light, held high above a lovely head, 
 should reveal the features of her whom he was hiding from this 
 fiend, standing here not six feet away in the darkness ? His 
 hand reached out and grasped the door-handle, but the pirate 
 passed on, apparently satisfied in his search. 
 
 Not long after this episode, two figures came out of the house, 
 one mufifled and veiled, the other full of anxious cares for his com- 
 panion, lifting her over the puddles and rough places, pulling her 
 shawl closer about her slender shoulders, and often supporting 
 affectionately the lagging steps. Once in the little boat and off 
 for the vessel, the Spanish maiden — for it was she — seemed to re- 
 vive in courage and in spirits, and all the voyage up the beautiful 
 river she spent in gayety and happiness, with her husband, the 
 pirate captain, or " king's privateersman," as Bellomont had now 
 made him. 
 
 Soon he was to go on the king's bidding, by means of Bello- 
 mont, to fight the pirates in " the Red Sea or elsewhere," but 
 on his return he would settle down in the New World with this 
 beautiful wife, and live a new and happy life. So they dreamed 
 and loved each other, on this strange bridal journey, being happy 
 and gay, for was not danger and that dreadful Balldridge behind 
 them ? and though parting was so near, it would not be very 
 long to wait — two years at most, — and then peace and prosperity 
 lor the rest of their lives. Meanwhile she was to find protection 
 with an old negress whom Kidd knew, and who lived in a little 
 house at the foot of Kaaterskill, or Palenville Clove, by the 
 wonderful Catskills. She could wait for him in that charming little 
 mountain nook, and surely none could find her there. His had 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. ii 
 
 been a life of wild adventure and many daring and successful ex- 
 ploits, and the warm autumn days passed quickly as they sailed 
 along, beguiling the way with tales of the past. She, too, had 
 suffered privation and dangers, as stolen from her father's ship now 
 a year since, she had been passed over to the cruel Balldridge as 
 his slave, and had been rescued a few months after by Captain 
 Kidd, in a fight with his pirate crew in the South Sea. She had 
 soon learned to love her deliverer, who treated her with a gentle- 
 ness and deference as extreme as his harshness and severity to 
 others. No knight of old was ever more noble in his lady's eyes, 
 than this pirate of world's renown in the sight of the romantic 
 Spanish girl. Doubtless she made no fine-spun analysis of his 
 moral deviations, and to her, his seizure of other men's ships on 
 the high seas was no theft, but an adventure in which daring 
 and danger played equal parts, while crowned monarchs watched the 
 deeds of her hero. Now that he had promised to amend his life 
 and was about setting forth on an expedition as a loyal subject of 
 the English king, any wrong, if wrong there was in him, was 
 wiped away. 
 
 It is a pretty picture, of which tradition gives us but a glimpse 
 or hint, this brief idyl in the wild life of Kidd ; the slow sail up the 
 broad river in the October haze of the faded days of fall in this en- 
 chanted region. In and out of the Highlands, where Anthony's 
 Nose was only a high purple mountain of tremulous sunshine, and 
 the o-oreeous foliasfe of many tints came down to the water's very 
 edge, and leaned over to see itself in the placid river ; past Esopus, 
 hidden up its winding creek, and so to Catskill, where, after many 
 calms and delays, they at last arrived, and the beautiful water- 
 journey was ended. 
 
 Here they lay at anchor for two days, while Captain Kidd went 
 among the friendly natives and settlers, trading and giving out 
 
12 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 that he and his friends came here for the fishino;- and for furs which 
 they wanted in trade from the Indians. On the third night there 
 came on board an Indian who drew the captain aside to give him 
 some information, and in an hour's time twenty men went down 
 over the side of the larger sloop into boats which were there in 
 ■w^aiting, and last came the Spanish girl, cloaked and veiled as be- 
 fore. Each man carried on his shoulders a leather sack which 
 seemed very heavy. 
 
 Arrived on shore they took a path leading around the village 
 through the woods, avoiding all observation and proceeding in 
 complete silence. So they passed on over the hills toward the 
 mountains, coming in the early dawn to the opening of the Kaater- 
 skill Clove. Here the men were marched with care into a thicker 
 part of the forest, and their captain and the lady struck off by a 
 side path toward the outskirts of the little settlement. Just where 
 the road coming out of the clove now divides, stood then a little 
 hut, where lived alone an old Madagfascar ne^rress, shunned 
 by the whites and the Indians. Over the few black slaves held 
 then by the early settlers she exercised great power, for they 
 feared her and yet paid her a half- worshipful deference. At the 
 time of our story, the latter part of the seventeenth century, the 
 old quarrels between the Patroon Van Rensselaer and the gov- 
 ernment of the colony having been long since settled, a good title 
 could be given to purchasers of farms in the valley, and the 
 holders rendered safe from the autocratic seizures of tithes and im- 
 posts by the old Patroon, who had tenaciously claimed the region,, 
 and hence these rich lands were being rapidly settled and cul- 
 tivated. In the prosecution of such labors, the farmers from time 
 to time sent to New York, or as the Dutch still insisted on calling 
 it, New Amsterdam, for slaves, and in one of these consignments 
 had come old Dora, the negress just mentioned. She had pre- 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 13 
 
 sented free papers, or rather a document certifying that her free- 
 dom had been bought, and she had given the price of her passage 
 to Catskill, wishing, she said, to live near the mountains. She 
 seemed to be supplied with money sufficient for her needs, and 
 wore about her unusual signs of prosperity, such as great shining 
 silver hoops in her ears, and a heavy string of beaten silver beads 
 of rude manufacture about her neck. All these peculiar circum- 
 stances, and her wish to live alone in a strange, far country up the 
 river, caused even her white neighbors to regard her with sus- 
 picion. Long years after, the story gained currency that it was 
 Kidd who sent her, with just the contingency in mind, that there 
 would come a day when she would prove useful in helping him to 
 conceal his treasures in these haunted hills. 
 
 To this woman Kidd took his bride, and left her with many 
 kisses of farewell in the tender care of the negress. The old 
 woman went out with him for a moment to a place behind the hut, 
 and there received from him certain orders and advice, and, doubt- 
 less, also good gold, and for many days after she absented herself 
 for several hours, saying it was at his commands. Perhaps she 
 was carrying the bags one by one to places of concealment on the 
 mountain, where some day their contents will astonish and delight 
 a hardy explorer, climbing up to the hidden caves and deep crevices 
 that seam their rocky sides. However that may be, the men must 
 have left their burdens to her care, for they were back on their 
 boats by night again without taking time to climb up through the 
 clove. 
 
 This treasure was the contents of one only of the sloops, and 
 what was done with the rest is matter of comment to this day, and 
 the men have been not a few who have sought them up and down 
 on both banks of the river. The remaining treasure was probably 
 buried somewhere between New York and Catskill, for the sloops 
 
14 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 returned empty, and the rest of the goods of the Moorish mer- 
 chantman were disposed of in other directions, the vessels making 
 no further voyages up the Hudson. 
 
 Soon after this we have records of the new compact Kidd 
 made with the Earl of Bellomont, governor of the provinces, and 
 Robert Livingston, whom Kidd had probably taken occasion to 
 visit on his return down the river, the Livingston Manor being 
 about twelve miles below Catskill, on the east bank. 
 
 Articles of agreement were drawn up between Kidd, Robert 
 Livingston, and Bellomont, by which the earl was to pay four 
 fifths of the cost of a ship to sail to " the Red Sea or elsewhere," 
 and also to procure a captain's commision for Wm. Kidd, in the 
 royal navy, Livingston to pay the remaining fifth of the ship's cost, 
 while Kidd bound himself to the king's service, and if he secured 
 no treasure was to give up the ship on his return. The agree- 
 ment begins as follows : " Whereas the said Captain Kidd is de- 
 sirous to obtain a commission as captain of a private man-of-war 
 in order to take prizes from the king's ennemies, and otherwise to 
 annoy them, and whereas, also, certain persons did some time 
 since depart from New England, Rhode Island, New York, 
 and other parts in America and elsewhere, Wi an intention to 
 pyrates and to comit spoyles and depredations against the laws of 
 Nations, in the Red Sea or elsewhere, and to return with such 
 goods and riches as they could get, to certain places by them 
 agreed upon, of which said persons and places the said Captain 
 Kidd hath notice, and is desirous to fight w^h & subdue the said 
 pyrates with whom the said Captain Kidd shall meet at sea, in 
 case he is empowered so to do, and whereas it is agreed between 
 the said parties that for the purposes aforesaid, a good and suffi- 
 cient ship, to the likeing of the said Captain Kidd shall be forth- 
 with bought, whereof the said Captain Kidd is to have the comand." 
 
i6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 All of which was duly and promptly done, and in the year 1695 
 our gallant hero sailed away a full-fledged captain in the king's 
 service, " with white sails flowing the seas beyond," but never 
 more to sail the peaceful waters of the river, where awaited him 
 his dream of love and peace and happiness. Even the dream 
 soon proved false, and faded, for rude hands disturbed his litde 
 mountain nest, and once more sorrow hunted forth the bird it had 
 sheltered. 
 
 In the spring following Kidd's departure, a new setder came to 
 the valley lands under the mountains. Five hundred acres were 
 bought near Leeds, and a large stone house, with suitable out- 
 buildings for the cattle and slaves, erected. The owner was a 
 stumpy, cruel-faced man, with a sun-burned, sailor look, and a 
 manner full of vulgarity, while his speech was plentifully interlarded 
 with oaths. He maltreated his slaves, frequendy administering 
 unmerciful punishments, such as hanging by the thumbs and tying 
 the tongue with a tightly-drawn cord, until his neighbors shunned 
 and loathed him. He seemed not to lack money, for he pushed 
 the building and cultivating of his farm in a way that involved 
 great outlay, and caused the frugal Dutch to marvel greatly, and 
 to wonder from what land of plenty this prodigal stranger hailed. 
 He had no family and no companion, and as autumn came on, and 
 the work of settling was nearly finished, a loneliness and resdess- 
 ness seemed to take possession of him, and then he would wander 
 away on his horse, spending whole days in the mountains, as if 
 seekinef some one. 
 
 Meanwhile how fares our Spanish beauty in her hiding-place ? 
 All through the long winter she had pined and drooped, sitting 
 sadly in the litde cabin while the old negress went out on her daily 
 ramble amone the hills. Nothincr could curb these resdess roam- 
 ings, not even the deep snow, for the creature had improvised a 
 
17 
 
 VIEW FROM PROSPECT ROCK. — KAATERSKILL FALLS. 
 
1 8 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 kind of snow-shoe, and on these she kept up her daily habit of 
 wandering-. Among many other crafts she had learned shooting 
 with the bow and arrow, and seldom returned without some small 
 beast or bird to tempt the appetite of her guest. Daily she tried 
 to draw the maiden with her, but in vain ; the poor girl only 
 shook her head sadly, and shuddered as she glanced at the snow 
 outside. 
 
 One day the negress said to her in the fragmentary Spanish she 
 had learned somewhere in her wanderings : " Come now, I have a 
 great wonder to show you — only this once ; I will not ask you 
 again." 
 
 As if to buy peace at any price, the young girl rose and suf- 
 fered herself to be equipped for a mountain climb. On snow 
 shoes, she followed her guide up a winding trail and then over a 
 level stretch, coming toward the amphitheatre where the fall of the 
 Kaaterskill drops over seemingly, from one point, into bottomless 
 space. Clambering down the deep ravine, her mind lost in far off 
 thoughts, the Spanish lady reached the bottom of the first ravine, 
 when her guide seized her arm and pointed upward. To the half- 
 blinded eyes of this daughter of the South, who had never beheld 
 snow and ice before this dreary winter, a miracle appeared, and, 
 subdued by its power, she devoutly crossed herself. From within 
 a few feet of them rose a shining white tower of glittering ice, 
 touching with its apex the cliff above. Dazzled at first by the ex- 
 cessive brilliancy of reflection, the eyes could perceive nothing but 
 the white blinding lio-ht of it all, but at last, accustomed to the 
 glare, Isabel perceived through the ice walls the stream, leaping 
 forth and breaking into spray, but perfectly noiseless. It was a 
 phantom waterfall, enchanted and bound in this prison of ice. All 
 round the circular edge of the cliff above, great icicles fell in a 
 crystal fringe, reflecting the sunlight in all the prismatic tints, a 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 19 
 
 blazing border of green and orange and rose-red jewels. Beneath 
 the frozen lake on which the great tower stood, the stream slid 
 silently away to the lower fall where it broke into a thousand 
 waves, making the second cataract a great frozen wall of plunging 
 waters. 
 
 LOOKING UP. LOOKING DOWN. 
 
 fawn's leap. 
 
 The maiden was much moved by all this, and from that day 
 forth, no longer declined to accompany the black woman on her 
 rambles. As spring crept up the mountains, they fished in the 
 swollen watercourses or hunted for sweet cresses or the flowering 
 
20 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 arbutus. Each changing month developed some new treasure of 
 nature which the old woman's wood-lore readily found and ap- 
 propriated. So passed away the summer, and autumn found the 
 captain's bride more cheerful and even merry at times. 
 
 One October day the two companions were seated with their 
 basket beside them, on the cliff above Fawn's Leap. All the vivid 
 tints were on the foliage once more, and the same purple haze 
 through which she had sailed hither last year, was filling the heart 
 of Isabel with sad thoughts as she leaned back with hands clasped 
 behind her head. Startled suddenly by the crackling of branches 
 and the sound of a human voice beneath them, she sat up and 
 leaned forward to observe the intruder. The voice went on talk- 
 ing as if the man spoke only to himself: " She must be about this 
 clove somewhere ; Fletcher said it all went here, from that sloop, 
 and the girl went with the gold. A curse on the coin ! I want 
 the girl ! Let Fletcher find the gold for himself! " 
 
 Isabel listened with a beating heart. The old negress had 
 fallen into a doze, and, seated a little way off, kept her head rest- 
 ing on her knees. The girl looked at her and made a rapid cal- 
 culation of the time necessary to waken her and escape through 
 the bushes ; then, looking more closely at the man below, she rec- 
 ognized the hated Balldridge, and all discretion fled from her, even 
 the power of thought, as the wild instinct of flight alone possessed 
 her limbs. In a moment she had sprung from rock to rock across 
 the stream, and was dashinc: throucrh brush and brier in a blind ef- 
 fort to escape ; but in that moment the pirate had seen her, and, 
 springing up the mountain side, made short work of so unequal a 
 chase. He caught her near the open trail that led up through the 
 clove, and quickly securing her struggling form, regardless of cries 
 and remonstrances, to his horse which he had tied there, bore her 
 down to his home near Leeds, for he was the stranger who had 
 
iii'iiiiiiil\iivltl'i!iHf'««hta.i:h^\w\ft\*^^ 
 
 r,i VIEW FROM THE TOI.L-HOUSE AT PALENVILLE. 
 
22 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 built the fine new house there. Not a word did he exchange with 
 her till safe and fast in his stone prison he had her at his mercy, 
 and then the blacks told fearful tales of the sounds that issued from 
 the room where she was locked in. 
 
 Each day the " mas'r " would go to her, and the tones of his 
 voice through the closed door would sound almost gentle, as he 
 seemed to plead with her, but the replies were too low to be 
 heard. At length his words would grow louder, and curses came 
 thicker and faster, while the answers were still the same ; at last, 
 blows and shrieks would come forth, friehteninsf all the servants 
 from the house. Presently the door would slam, and the master 
 would stalk forth to visit his still unsatisfied rage on whatever 
 crossed his path. He said he had a runaway slave in that room, 
 and warned the rest not to merit a like fate. 
 
 Through all the long winter no one ever saw the face of this 
 runaway, but through many a night the blacks heard her footsteps 
 as she paced back and forth— and sometimes her sobs. At last, 
 when spring had returned, one morning she was gone. Balldridge 
 raged and cursed, but in vain ; no one knew aught of her method 
 of escape, though the blacks believed that some supernatural 
 power had spirited her away from her tormentor. The tormentor, 
 however, had quite a different suspicion, for under the window 
 were two pairs of footprints, and all went in the direction of the 
 mountains. 
 
 The ensuing month he spent searching for the hut of the old 
 negress. Somewhere in the Kaaterskill Clove he knew it must be, 
 though he had no certain information even of that. 
 
 Again poor Isabel was back with her old protectress, but 
 only a shadow of the Isabel who had been carried away the 
 previous autumn. Haggard and thin, she sat all day gazing 
 with her great wild eyes into the fire. Every expression, save 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 23 
 
 terror, seemed to have left her face, and that emotion was written 
 in every Hne of her shrinking form. The old woman has hardly- 
 been able to leave her side since the escape, so distraught has the 
 poor girl been at the mere idea of being alone. This morning, 
 however, wood must be brought for the fire, and meal from a 
 neighboring farm, so with many soothing words and charges to 
 keep closely within doors, the negress leaves her for a few hours. 
 Crouched down in the chimney-corner, the girl awaits hour after 
 hour the returning footsteps. At last, soothed by the continued 
 silence and the loneliness of the surrounding forest, she leans her 
 poor distracted head against the bricks and dry mud that form 
 the chimney, and falls into a deep sleep. Perhaps it is a dream of 
 the river journey that comes to her — that voyage that seems now 
 so far off in the past, — or perhaps it is a vision of the new life she 
 is to enter with her gallant lover when he returns from his pursuit 
 of the king's business. Whatever the picture may be that merci- 
 ful sleep has painted, its glory has lighted up her face and fixed a 
 smile on her lips. Some one comes creeping in at the half open 
 door, some one steps softly over the clay floor and stands over 
 her, and the some one holds in one hand a cow-hide whip, and in 
 the other a coil of stout hempen cord. On the stooping face 
 is a baleful look, more powerful, seemingly, than whip or rope, 
 for the sleeper stirs uneasily, the light leaves her face, and she 
 slowly opens her eyes. There is not a sound between them, and 
 the girl presses her eyes shut with her hands as if thereby to dis- 
 pel a hideous nightmare that has somehow turned up among her 
 dream-pictures, then opens them again to behold the dreadful 
 picture still there. Still not a sound does she make, till Balldridge 
 raises himself and says between his set teeth : 
 
 " Get up, and come with me ! " 
 
 Then she springs away from him, throwing her arms wildly 
 above her head. 
 
24 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 " I will not — I will not ! I will die before I go back to that 
 dreadful house and — and you ! " 
 
 Here a shudder of inexpressible loathing seizes her and she 
 rushes toward the door as if a remembrance of some cliff near by 
 had suggested to her an easy method of ending the misery to 
 come. But Balldridge is too quick for her, and soon has her 
 bound, and is hurrying to his horse in the path below the hilL 
 Here a brilliant device occurs to his fiendish invention, and he 
 ties one end of the cord round her neck, attaching the other end 
 to his saddle. 
 
 " Now, my lass," he cries, as he springs on the horse, " this 
 time you may walk, and we '11 see if you 're in a hurry again to run 
 away to that she-devil among the hills ! " 
 
 Whether the crirl cried out, or made some backward move- 
 ment, or whether indeed the spur pricked too sharply, is not 
 known, but the spirited horse plunged suddenly, pitching his rider 
 headlong before him, and dashed off homeward. Poor Isabel's 
 miseries were soon at an end, for death must have quickly ensued. 
 Certain it is that her body was dashed literally to pieces against 
 the rocks on that awful journey, and the horse arrived at his stable 
 with only the worn and broken cord dragging behind him. 
 
 So brutal a murder, even of a slave, found some punishment in 
 the imperfect administration of justice in those early days. Ball- 
 dridge was found guilty, but some interest, presumably his gold, 
 softened the sentence. He was to be hung — when he arrived at 
 the age of ninety-nine! He was also to present himself to the 
 judges of the court, once each year when court was in session, 
 wearing always a cord around his neck as a memento of his crime. 
 
 So he w^ore out his wretched days, hated and feared by all who 
 knew him, and in his old age they say he wore always a silken 
 cord about his neck. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 25 
 
 The scattered remains of the girl were collected and buried 
 by order of the court, opposite his house-door, where a stone, 
 telling the story of her death, should face him as he passed out. 
 But he nailed up the door and no one ever after used it. The 
 strangest part of his story is that he actually lived to be ninety- 
 nine years old, though no one then could be found who would have 
 molested the old man, already punished by a long life of loneliness 
 and fear. 
 
 The house where he lived has been haunted ever since, and 
 though now in ruins, it is said that in one corner where stood the 
 room in which the hapless Isabel was imprisoned, all night long 
 footsteps go pacing back and forth, and sobs and wails and bitter 
 •sighs afflict the night air. A great white horse with fiery eyes 
 comes tearing down the road toward Leeds, dragging a ghastly 
 shrieking ghost, but sometimes both horse and ghostly woman 
 take on the form of skeletons. 
 
 As for Captain Kidd, he never returned to claim his bride. 
 He sailed to the Red Sea as per contract, but he seems to have 
 been unable to resist the spell of his old outlaw life, for instead of 
 ■capturing the pirates, he joined with them once more. He was at 
 last captured and taken to London, says the old chronicle, and was 
 hanged. The last glimpse we have of him in our old New York 
 documents is where the Earl of Bellomont falls under some slight 
 suspicion with the Lords of Trade, of having connived somewhat 
 at Kidd's piracies in the hope of gain for himself. Their Lord- 
 ships viewed with disapproval that fine scheme of Livingstone and 
 Bellomont to " set a thief to catch a thief," and so they set inquiries 
 on foot, thereby worrying the Earl into shifting most of the blame 
 on Mr. Livingstone. 
 
 In a letter to Vernon, the secretary, the Earl says : " There 's 
 no intricacy in all that matter," and further on he continues. 
 
i>6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 " and ye success, I believe, had been very fortunate and 
 
 serviceable, had we not been persuaded by Mr. Livingstone to put 
 the ship under the comand of a most aband'd villian, for we 
 were all of us strangers to Kidd, but employed him on Mr. Liv- 
 ingstone's recommendation of his bravery and honesty, but he 
 broke articles with us, for, instead of sailing direct to those seas 
 which pyrate ships do frequent, he came hither directly to New 
 York and loytered away several months ; and Mr. Livingstone 
 hath told me that there was a private contract between Colonel 
 Fletcher and Kidd, whereby Kidd obliged himself to give Fletcher 
 10,000 li. if he made a voyage ; Mr. Livingstone told me this was 
 whispered about but he could not get any such light on it as to be 
 
 able to prove there was such a bargain between them," " for 
 
 mine own part I never saw him (Kidd) above thrice, and Mr. 
 Livingstone came with him every time to my house in Dover 
 Street." 
 
 No doubt this bargain dimly hinted at between Fletcher and 
 Kidd was payment for the loan of Fletcher's sloop. Whatever 
 their bargains, their sins and their frustrated dreams, they have 
 probaby long since cleared them all up, for governor and pirate, 
 Livingstone and Fletcher, Kidd and his Spanish maiden, had 
 joined the great procession of" dim sheeted ghosts " many a year 
 before we threw over our colonial governors along with that fate- 
 ful tea in Boston harbor, and all other British abominations. 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! " cries Miss Polly, as the story is ended ; " I 
 am sure I shall think of that poor girl at every spot you have men- 
 tioned in your story ! I shall not be able to climb through that 
 ravine of the Kaaterskill Clove without a wild desire to run from 
 Balldridge, and I shall just shi-i-ver when I see that old hut if it is 
 still there ! " 
 
 Here a diversion was made by Captain Oldbore, who had come 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 ^7 
 
 up during the latter part of the recital, and who had restrained 
 himself thus far with difficulty. 
 
 " Why, man, that 's the most absurdly inaccurate thing I ever 
 heard ! all that about the draQ^crinSf at the horse's tail is another 
 story, and of itself was pure fabrication, you must know ! Of 
 course as to the coming of Kidd up here, that 's likely enough, 
 though how far up he came is not settled, but the rest, oh, pish ! " 
 
 " I have told my story," says the Literary Fellow, with a quiet 
 smile ; " the burden of disproof lies with you." 
 
 ON THE ESOPUS NEAR PHOENICIA. 
 
 " Yes," says Miss Polly, " sit right down and begin ; no doubt 
 we shall listen entranced ! " with which remark she walks scorn- 
 fully away. 
 
 " By the way. Captain Oldbore, we must be coming to some 
 very interesting revolutionary ground now ; no doubt this part of 
 the river is teeming with historical associations." 
 
 The old QT-entleman forgets his late rebuke under Miss Ruther- 
 ford's gentle influence, and forthwith launches out into such a 
 stream of anecdote and reminiscence and statistics as rivets that lady 
 to his side willy-nilly. On past Kingston and Rondout they sail, 
 
28 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 where the massacre of Esopus and its burning by the British are 
 treated at length, till Catskill village approaches. The entrance 
 to the enchanted land is not far away now, and behold, its guardian 
 lying asleep on the mountain tops ! 
 
 Nearing Catskill as )'OU come up the river, the gigantic outlines 
 of a recumbent Indian are traceable in the contour of the moun- 
 tains against the sky. He lies on his back, with his knees slightly 
 drawn up, and arms folded across his breast. The elongation on 
 top of his head has the appearance of a war-plume of feathers. 
 The attitude is imposing in its grand serenity, and on those ideal 
 mountain days, when great fluffy clouds go chasing across their 
 wooded sides, playing hide-and-seek with the sunshine, we can 
 easily appreciate how distinct the personality of this giant warrior 
 became to the superstitious mind of the savage, as the shifting 
 lights give him the appearance of slight movement, and even 
 cause his breast to heave convulsively betimes. Of course he had 
 his story ; what hill, or valley, or appearance in nature, had not its 
 reason for being in the misty shadow-land of the Indian's past ? 
 
 " Once on a time," Great Manitou's favorite children, the Iro- 
 quois tribes, were worrried and devoured by a giant until they 
 could endure it no longer, neither vanquish him unaided, so they 
 cast themselves on the mercy of the Great Spirit. They went up 
 to his high places, and besought him, saying: "Great Father of 
 us all, thou knowest we have done brave things ! We have de- 
 fended our lodges ; we have given our lives ; w^e have not been 
 afraid ; we have done according to thy command, and we are not 
 strong enough. Oh ! Chief of Warriors, slay this giant for us ! " 
 
 So Manitou heard their prayer, and came among them in the 
 form of a huge eagle, to deliver them. He found that the giant 
 had devoured their corn so that their wives and children starved, 
 and the breath of the dread creature was so foul that many died 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 29 
 
 of wasting disease. Then Manitou engaged in a fierce conflict 
 with the evil spirit, who had the appearance of an Indian, and at 
 last vanquished him, but did not kill him. He, however, put him 
 into a deep sleep, and chained him in the outline of his sacred 
 hills, saying to his children, the tribes about their feet : "There 
 shall he lie in slumber while ye are brave and fierce and strong, 
 and therefore pleasing to me ; but when I am angered against my 
 children, I will wake him again, and he shall arise and destroy all 
 thing-s ! " 
 
 ON CATSKILL CREEK. 
 
 Thus pestilence and famine were taken from this favored peo- 
 ple, and chained in Manitou's hunting-ground, and heaven's sun- 
 shine, rain, and breezes brought back plenty and health to this 
 happy region. Surely, on these wind-blown hill-tops, where, from 
 snow till snow again, some spicy breath ever scents the air, 
 whether of sweet-fern or flowers, or the hundred odors of the deep 
 wood, the " Big Indian " can never wake and arise again. 
 
 Arrived at Catskill, the party was suddenly dropped into a 
 
30 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 howling babel, whereby any sane and clear-headed person might 
 easily have been driven to sudden insanity ; but these travellers 
 were old stagers, used to journeyings by land and sea, and conse- 
 quently not readily confused. They wended their way, uninter- 
 rupted by any alluring cries of " This way, Sir ! Cab, Sir ? " "Car- 
 riage, Sir ? — this way for Mountain View House ! " " Only stage 
 direct to the mountains ! " With stern determination, they shook 
 off these hackmen, who always know better than you do where 
 you want to go, and got into the narrow-gauge train, in waiting 
 for passengers bound for the mountains. 
 
 " There, now ! " exclaimed Miss Perkins, as they passed on, 
 " that poor old lady who said she wanted to go to Catskill Village, 
 has resigned herself to those demons and they will tear her limb 
 from limb ! " 
 
 Unfortunately she had given herself to one cabby and her 
 baggage to another, and thus chaos had ensued. 
 
 The office which the shriekinir little engine resiofned at Palen- 
 
 o o o 
 
 ville, a huge mountain coach there assumed, and the party was 
 transferred to it for the climb up the mountain side. 
 
 Oh, the loveliness of that ascent ! Out of the dust and heat, by 
 slow toiling, surely, and yet with evident progress, into a new 
 world of verdure and cool breezes and great silence. There was 
 only a hint now and then of vast reaches into space, for daylight 
 was fast fleeing, to be replaced by the glimmer of a young moon, 
 and, as the great ark of a stage lurched around a corner where the 
 forest was cut away, the faint touch of silver on a sea of tree-tops 
 below made their hearts beat with a sense of the depths just be- 
 yond. 
 
 Our tired travellers slept the sleep of the weary that night, and 
 if strange visions of Rip Van Winkle's midnight revellers visited 
 more than one pillow, what wonder ? Had they not seen the inn 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 31 
 
 to which he returned from his long- sleep in this very clove, and the 
 old sign swinging, on their way up, and all by the witching light 
 of the young moon ? 
 
 In spite of all that they were up betimes in the morning, and 
 assembled in the parlor by appointment to go out to an eight 
 o'clock breakfast. But where was pretty Polly ? Surely, she of 
 all people could not be wasting this precious holiday in sleep ! 
 Indeed not, for here she comes, a great bunch of hare-bells in her 
 hands. 
 
 ^ ''^J* ^'^^^P Six 
 
 RIP VAN WINKLE HOUSE. 
 
 " Aha! " she cries, " I have outdone you all, for I was up in 
 time to see the sun rise, and see, I have a nosegay with mountain- 
 dew on it. 
 
 Breakfast over, the next thing to do is North Mountain with its 
 views. The day was one peculiarly characteristic of the moun- 
 tains, hot, but with an occasional cool breeze to pat the cheek 
 with a slightly frosty touch, and little white clouds sailing over the 
 bluest of skies. 
 
32 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Toiling up the steep slope near Captain Oldbore was a stout 
 old German gentleman with a pleasant, beaming face, out of which 
 a pair of mild blue eyes looked through very short-sighted glasses. 
 At some exclamation of surprise, he took occasion to say, " Then 
 it ees thet you are strange to these mountains ? " 
 
 Being assured that such was the case, he continued : 
 " Oh, it ees not so with me ! I am goming here now these 
 dwenty years, and it is dangerous eff you will pe glimbing. It is 
 many soomers I hev carried pendages und leeniment in my 
 
 THE OLD GERMAN. 
 
 pockets for an eccident " — here he displayed a neat roll of linen 
 and the bottle. 
 
 " What a dreadful apprehension ! " shuddered one of the 
 ladies. 
 
 Back toward the west, the view from the North Mountain is 
 very fine, and no feature in it is more lovely than the tiny lakes 
 nestling down in the shadows. On the dullest days they catch 
 some remnant of light and flash it back to the hill-tops. Mrs, 
 Schuyler felt that she could not go home without a nearer ex- 
 ploration of those lakes. 
 
 " Better not ; you won't find them so pretty nearer by, prob- 
 ably nothing but boggy little mud-holes." 
 
m 
 
 » 
 
 KtMr 
 
 ' -»*?^fi^' 
 
34 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 It was the Artist who spoke, and his temerity was promptly 
 punished by the general expression of a determination to investi- 
 gate those bodies of water while at the Kaaterskill Hotel. 
 
 In the afternoon they transferred themselves to that house. 
 There the ladies seated themselves on the broad veranda, while 
 the male members of the party were absent in conclave with that 
 august person, the hotel clerk. 
 
 The rueful groups soon returned, headed by Mr. Schuyler. 
 
 THE DUDE. 
 
 " Well, my dear," said that over-heated and rubicund indi- 
 vidual, 'T guess we 're in for it. They 're all here — the Carrolls, 
 the Beekmans, and fifty more — besides, there 's a hop to-night." 
 
 This last was added tentatively, in some fear of that imperious 
 little lady who ruled his skies, for well he knew her aversion to 
 summer parties and other full-dress frivolities in the " heated 
 term." Each summer she carried off her submissive spouse to a 
 pleasuring like this, with a few chosen spirits, for a rest, after the long 
 winter when she served her turn at Society's wheel with the other 
 
36 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 social slaves. Now she leaned back in her chair and fanned 
 herself gloomily. 
 
 Alas ! the futility of those pretty dresses in the trunks ! Each 
 lady had brought a gown suitable to meet just such a possible con- 
 tingency as this, but it was carried much as one takes an um- 
 brella on a cloudy day, with a defiantly-held superstition that it 
 may scare off the rain. Miss Rutherford, too, looked bored, but 
 Miss Polly cried gayly, " Why, that 's delightful ! " 
 
 So the hop came off, bringing pleasure to one of the ladies at 
 least, and our pilgrims made their entree once more into New 
 York and Philadelphia and Boston at once, in the great drawing- 
 room which seemed large enough to hold the entire population of 
 the last-named city. All the many friends came flocking about, 
 and the mutual surprises and greetings and exclamations were very 
 numerous. 
 
 There was a band, of course, and waltzing, and some flirtation, 
 no doubt, while just outside the long windows the moonlight had 
 flooded the great world beneath their feet. Surely in that en- 
 chanted land down there, all wrapped in a silver mist where a 
 shining ribbon wound along through the dim light showing the 
 course of the river, surely there was no care, nor sorrow, nor heart- 
 ache. What a wonderfully beautiful world it is after all, and how 
 the cynics have abused it ! A faint odor steals up through the still 
 air, the moonlight has a kind of throb in it ; verily those hills, rising 
 faraway there in the east, must be the Delectable Mountains. Here 
 an " ill-boding crow," awakened from his midnight slumbers, comes 
 flapping and croaking up the gorge, a window opens on the quiet 
 corner and two people step out, bringing a flare of gaslight, the 
 sound of brass instruments, and a scrap of society comment. 
 
 " You think her so quiet and pretty? I assure you her con- 
 duct has been the gossip of the house this month past ! " 
 
38 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Wake up, old world ! You are an arrant humbug, no Arcadia 
 after all, but just the same old evil-thinking and evil-speakino- 
 world }-ou were before. 
 
 In the morning there was an energetic scramble over rocks and 
 hills and through rocky ravines. Who can tell what those seven 
 people saw from Sunset Rock ? Each through his own mood saw 
 his own picture, and long he never so deeply, not one peep could 
 
 ALIGATOR ROCK. 
 
 he get of what his neighbor might be finding there at the same 
 moment. In the shifting lights and shades, the deep greens and 
 suggestions of coming autumn, the Artist found much for his work, 
 and carried home with him more than his portfolio held, while I 
 doubt if Miss Rutherford's herbarium contains half the blossoms she 
 picked by the way ; as for the Literary Fellow, much was brewing 
 in his head, of which he afterward gave to others but a portion, and 
 
40 
 
 THE 'LAXD OF RIP ]\-iX WIXKLE. 
 
 that perhaps not of his best, for what is best in artistic impressions 
 seldom eets translated after all. so that a man's work is always just 
 behind his effort. 
 
 As for the tiny lakes they proved to be as lovely as they had 
 promised. Nestling down between the surrounding peaks, they 
 seemed fit abodes of peace. Around their shores tall reeds, cat- 
 tails, calumus, and many others are ever nodding and bowing before 
 
 SHEI.TKKINr, ROCK. 
 
 the little breezes that shiver o\'er the bosom of the water, while 
 tall trees lean over as far as they dare in the marsh)- foothold, and 
 throw deep shadows where trout can hide safely and water-fowl 
 float secure in the early spring. 
 
 Here these people rested in the shade, while the energetic 
 Miss Polly and John Grant went cleaving the water in a sharp- 
 nosed little boat after water-lilies that floated far out in mid- 
 channel. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 41 
 
 Already there were forewarnings of a shower, at which they 
 all rejoiced greatly, for a storm on these mountains gave promise 
 of great beauty and grandeur entirely new to them. The neces- 
 sary thing to do, therefore, was to make all haste to begin the pros- 
 pective drive down to Palen- 
 ville, for thev were ijoinQ^ there 
 to eneaofe rooms for the follow- 
 ing day, and they wanted to ob- 
 serve the progress of the storm 
 from the new road that leads 
 down the mountains from the 
 Kaaterskill House. 
 
 Midway on the descent the 
 storm burst upon them, so tht 
 covered wagon drew up at ont 
 side of the road beneath some 
 overhanorinor trees, and the in- 
 mates arrano^ed themselves to 
 enjoy the shower and yet pre- 
 serve dry clothes. With a tre- 
 mendous crashinof andboomine 
 it came tearing down the narrow 
 gorge. The rain seemed to ad- 
 vance in a gray column reach- 
 ing from the earth up into ix cauterskill clove after rain. 
 the darkened heavens, and the wind rushed along as if through 
 a funnel, with a fury redoubled from being confined by the moun- 
 tain sides. The trees bent low their bared heads, their branches 
 and leaves flying before the blast. The noise of the thunder was 
 deafening as it reechoed from side to side of the deep ravine. As 
 the storm was fierce, so it was of short duration, and soon the rain- 
 
42 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 -^1^' 
 
 cloud seemed to have passed over, while the sun broke forth above 
 the waiting travellers, shining- on the shower that was now beneath 
 their feet. As they passed on down to the valley the trees, the 
 wayside weeds and dripping vines, the very stones, glistened and 
 
 shone under the dancing 
 sunlicrht, while below them 
 the clouds were scattering in 
 little puffs like smoke, and 
 distant mutterings brought 
 word that the spectacle was 
 over. 
 
 Down they go rattling 
 over the stones at a great 
 pace, for Palenville and din- 
 ner are ahead and much must 
 be done yet this day. Quar- 
 ters secured for the night, 
 arrangements made about 
 
 fe. 
 
 
 receivinrr ihe bao-Q-aore that is 
 IWj^'^^^'"-' ^ ^ to be sent down, and dinner 
 
 eaten with great zest but 
 short ceremony, the horses 
 are put to the wagon and 
 they again ascend the moun- 
 
 AUTIST ROCK AND PALKNVILLE OVERLOOK. talu, thls timC by thc old 
 
 Kaaterskill Clove road, with the desi^rn of walking- back through 
 
 o o o 
 
 the ravine. " To the Laurel House," the order is given, and there 
 is the chief delight of the day, for there is the sanctum, or rather 
 the prison and keep of the far-famed " Kaaterskill fall." 
 
 " How prosaic — how vulgar ! " cries Mrs. Schuyler, " to walk 
 down wooden steps in a spot like this ! Oh, I really can't — I much 
 prefer clambering down some other way! " 
 
44 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 " Well, you '11 think differently when you come up," suggested 
 her husband. 
 
 Down at the bottom of the ravine they look up at the amphi- 
 theatre almost covered with dripping mosses, and fringed at top 
 with drooping pines. It is all very lovely, but pretty Miss Polly 
 voices a general sentiment when she exclaims disappointedly : 
 
 " Is that all there is of it ? That little thread of water? " 
 
 Indeed it did seem a very little stream to make such a fuss about. 
 The Artist smiled; he had been here before and knew the trick. 
 
 " Come down," he said, " under the lower fall, and then look up." 
 
 From that point the little house built just above the precipice 
 looked like a tiny bird-cage. 
 
 "Oh, look now !" cries Miss Polly clapping her hands with 
 pleasure. High up in the air a white cloudy mass springs far out 
 and falls in a foaming torrent. Down, down it comes till at the 
 foot of the first fall it strikes the glassy surface of the pool, and 
 rushes through it like a white snake. Over the second and smaller 
 fall it comes and falls at their very feet in a drenching shower of 
 spray. It is a humiliating thought that this beautiful mountain stream 
 should be dammed up and turned on at twenty-five cents a piece 
 for the lovers of nature, but we should have only the little thread 
 of water all summer otherwise, whereas now for a consideration we 
 get all the majesty of the spring floods let on. 
 
 " It must have looked like that the first time it came down over 
 that rock." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Miss Rutherford, looking for his 
 explanation to the Literary Fellow ; " was it not always here ? " 
 
 " You do not then know the legend? " 
 
 " Tell it- — -tell it! " demands Miss Perkins eagerly, while Ca|)tain 
 Oldbore looks impatient at such an absurd proposal. 
 
 ' It is too long to tell now, but this evening, if you wish " 
 
ON TOP OF HAINES FALLS 
 
46 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 "Of course," breaks in Mrs. Schuyler," the shower has cooled the 
 air so that we shall need a fire on the hearth this evening, and 
 I saw a place for one at our boarding-house. That will be just the 
 thing! " 
 
 Captain Oldbore said some- 
 thing about a little paper on 
 revolutionary days he had 
 i'-5 hoped to read them to-night. 
 
 " By all means," consents 
 /i^ the amiable lady, " we will 
 make that sort of thing the fea- 
 ture of our evenings." 
 
 Miss Perkins is no longer 
 able to restrain her feelings at 
 the prospect of an evening with 
 what promises to be a dreary 
 feast of facts. 
 
 " Now, my dear captain, this 
 region is sacred to the Indian, 
 and I must beg that you will 
 not intrude your pushinof and 
 uninteresting whites till we are 
 "f^'vvxJIIIife safely at home ! " 
 
 Miss Rutherford averted 
 any further trouble and smooth- 
 ed down the old man's ruffled 
 DRipi'iNG ROCK. vanlty by calling him aside to 
 
 give an opinion on the family name of a pretty vetch that clung 
 to the rocks near by. 
 
 Now for Haines' Falls and that gorge, stopping by the way at 
 Dripping Rock and at the Land Slide for the prettiest of views 
 
HAINES FALLS. 
 
48 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 down the winding clove. At Hainesville the wagon is dismissed 
 and they begin their scramble down through the rocky gorge. 
 Fawn's Leap, Buttermilk Falls, and Belle Falls come each in turn, 
 and each holds its own peculiar attraction undimmed by the rest. 
 Not far from Palenville the ravine widens into a little valley, and 
 the stream is bordered by wide stretches of green turf. Square 
 ridges of green grass surround old cellars partially filled with rub- 
 bish, over which wnld blackberry vines run riot and cover the un- 
 
 AKTIST GROTTO. 
 
 sighdiness. Golden-rod and purple asters choke the doorways, 
 and clumps of old-fashioned garden annuals mingle their sweet- 
 ness with the tall grass ; sweet-williams, pinks, and now and then 
 a shrub, where the path must have led to the door. This is a 
 veritable " Deserted Village," and here Captain Oldbore's facts 
 began to prove useful. He told ihem it was the ruins of an old 
 tannery with its settlement of workmen's cottages. Tanning 
 
49 
 
 THK CASCADES OF HAINES' FALLS. 
 
50 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 hides was once the most flourishing industry of all this region, but 
 as the hemlock bark was exhausted it died a natural death. Acres 
 upon acres of trees are felled, stripped, and left, the parching sum- 
 mer wind dries the dead wood to tinder, and then some chance 
 spark sets going a conflagration that sometimes lasts for weeks in 
 the autumn gales. 
 
 " Sir," concludes the excited captain, now in full tilt on one of 
 his hobbies — " Sir, we are a most unthrifty, wasteful people! Thus, 
 from year to year, we recklessly devastate our forests, lay bare the 
 sources of our streams, and so are gradually changing the climate 
 itself!" 
 
 Pleasant, indeed, was the fire that night as they all gathered 
 about it in the big Palenville boarding-house. There was a frosty 
 touch in the air and they spread their hands to the blaze with a 
 genuine sense of comfort. 
 
 " Now for the legend, Mr. Grant," and Mrs. Schuyler settles 
 back in her comfortable chair; " you know you promised! " 
 
 And thus, by the flickering light of a fire on the hearth, they 
 
 listened to 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE KAATERSKILL. 
 
 "A legend that grew in the forest's hush 
 Slowly as tear-drops gather and gush, — 
 ***** 
 
 It grew and grew. 
 From the pine-trees gathering a sombre hue, 
 Till it seems a mere murmur out of the vast 
 Norwegian forests of the past." — Lowell. 
 
 In the far off days behind us, in the time when legend and 
 fairy tale and childhood's lore was true, when every cave, and 
 ravine, and waterfall had its spirit, good or evil, these mountains 
 were sacred ground to the superstitious Indian, and it was with 
 wary steps and fearful heart he explored their secret places for 
 
^^■tei «^ v« 
 
 V* ^^^ ^-^ v:?.-^ ^ %ii 
 
 . i 
 
52 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 wild beasts, and the shyest birds of the wilderness. Here the great 
 Manitou held sway in a high place, and sent forth his emissaries 
 in the lightning and thunder, or the balmy west winds that draw 
 down through their cloves sometimes on a sultry midsummer day. 
 Held in the highest veneration, no human quarrels were allowed 
 to intrude on Manitou's battle-ground, and however loud he might 
 thunder and war on stormy nights, as his approving spirits clashed 
 in warfare, on this sacred ground the red man's scalping-knife was 
 sheathed, and his arrow never found here its way to any human 
 heart. Seldom, indeed, did the Indian come up here, save to hunt 
 the bear or catamount, or to cross over through the Palenville 
 clove trail to make war on the peaceful Catskill natives. 
 
 Along the river the Indians were more peaceful than the war- 
 like tribes of the six nations, who dwelt beyond the mountains, 
 spread over all the country to Lake Erie on the west and Ontario 
 on the north. The peaceful river-dwellers cultivated plantations 
 of corn and beans, and lived, according to the accounts of early 
 navigators who explored the Hudson, a quiet and somewhat 
 domestic life. They were of the great Mohican nation, and held 
 a tradition of an origin in the west where their enemies, the Mo- 
 hawks, now held sway. This tradition preserved among them, 
 caused them to resent with intense bitterness the marauding wars 
 of the tribes from beyond the mountains, who made occasional de- 
 scents upon their fertile fields, destroying sometimes a year's work 
 in a day, and murdering or killing all they could catch, while the 
 children they carried away in captivity, to be brought up as 
 Mohawks themselves. 
 
 Hcndrick Hudson, in his account of his voyage in the " Half 
 Moon " in 1609, gives some description? of these people and of 
 their habits. 
 
 He says : " At night we came to other high mountains which 
 
54 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 lie from the river-side. There we found very loving people, and 
 very old men where we were well used. Our boat went to fish, 
 and caught great store of very good fish. 
 
 "The sixteenth, fair and very hot weather. In the morning 
 our boat went again to fishing, but caught very few, by reason 
 their canoes had been there all night. This morning the people 
 came aboard and brought us ears of Indian corn and pompions 
 (squashes) and tobacco ; which we bought for trifles. We rode 
 still all day and filled fresh water ; at night we weighed and went 
 two leao-ues higher, and had shoald water ; so we anchored till 
 
 day." 
 
 At Schodac, he enters in his journal the' following : " I sailed to 
 
 the shore in one of their canoes, with an old man who was chief 
 
 of a tribe consisting of forty men and seventeen women. These 
 
 I saw there in a house well-constructed of oak bark, and circular in 
 
 shape, so that it had the appearance of being built with an arched 
 
 roof. It contained a great quantity of maize, or Indian corn, and 
 
 . beans of last year's growth ; and there lay near the house, for the 
 
 purpose of drying, enough to load three ships, besides what was 
 
 growing in the fields. On our coming into the house, two mats 
 
 were spread out to sit upon and some food was immediately served 
 
 in well-made wooden bowls. Two men were also dispatched at 
 
 once, with bows and arrows, in quest of game, w^io soon brought 
 
 in a pair of pigeons which they had shot. They likewise killed a 
 
 fat dog, and skinned it in great haste, with shells which they had 
 
 (Tot out of the water. They supposed I would remain with them 
 
 for the night ; but I returned in a short time on board the ship. 
 
 The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot 
 
 upon, and it also abounds in trees of every description. These 
 
 natives are a very good people, for when they saw that I would 
 
 hot remain, they supposed that I was afraid of their bows ; and 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 55 
 
 taking their arrows, they broke them in pieces and threw them into 
 the fire." 
 
 So it was these "very loving people " of the river, above Esopus, 
 the Catskill Indians, lived in peace and prosperity under their chief 
 Mayna, cultivating their lands and handing down to their children 
 the traditions of their forefathers, in which lore their tribe, the 
 Mohicans, were rich. 
 
 Not so, however, with their enemies, the Mohawks, beyond 
 the mountains. With them the art of war was imbibed with the 
 mother's milk, and all their tales about the fires were of blood and 
 battles, and the adventures of the braves with their enemies. Their 
 education was devoted to the development of endurance and 
 bravery, and their religion, like most of the Indians, was chiefly a 
 placating of the dread Manitou and the various demons and giants 
 that waged unseen war against them. High Peak was the home 
 of the Great Spirit, and the woods around it a sacred grove where 
 once yearly they came to perform their religious dance about a 
 huge fire at midnight. Tradition says that in the far-away past, when 
 there was no water in Palenville clove, that part of the mountains 
 was the favorite hunting-ground of Manitou ; and indeed, after a 
 climb through that fairy-like region on a bright June day, the super- 
 stition is easily believed. Nature seems to have made a peculiar 
 effort to adorn each rock and tree and wandering pathway with 
 lichen and moss and vine and delicate maiden-hair fern. All shades 
 of green are these, ever shifting and changing as the leaves stir and 
 glisten, with inter-lines of fine gray moss, and the blood-red splashes 
 of liver-wort on the varied carpet under foot, while all about are 
 hiding branches of blossom, white and pink or vivid scarlet ; it is a 
 fugue in colors — a soul-stirring harmony, that repeats itself in 
 echoing refrains all writ in nature's pigments. Here, great Mani- 
 tou walked at noon-day undisturbed, for in that remote time, no 
 trail was made through this clove. 
 
56 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Now among the western tribes beyond the mountain appeared 
 a great wonder — a snow-white maiden with flaxen hair and blue 
 eyes ! Their chief, when away alone, on an expedition to prove: 
 his prowess, had found her, he said, beneath a tree, down in the 
 South-river (Delaware-river) country, wrapped in white blankets 
 of exquisite fineness. The litde one was looked upon as a gift 
 from the Great Spirit, an omen of his favor, and was forthwith 
 treated as a eoddess. No o^oddess could wed with mortal man, 
 so she was vowed to virginity, and once a year was taken to 
 Manitou's mountains, and in the sacred clove left for a week to his 
 holy protection and ministration. This ceremony, however, was 
 not inaugurated till her eighteenth year. 
 
 . As she was clothed in white when first found, they continued 
 to make her garments of that hue, and "The White Maiden " was 
 her title. Very beautiful she was said to have been, and wise as 
 well, for her advice was asked as if she were an oracle, and her 
 commands were followed with fidelity. 
 
 One May-time they carried the maid to the sacred spot, pla- 
 cing in her lodge made all of white skins, procured at great 
 pains, cakes of maize, meat, and lentils, and then they went away 
 and left her weeping at her lonely plight. Not long did her tears 
 flow, however, for soon a slight noise in the forest startled her, 
 and springing up in terror she espied, approaching, a beautiful youth 
 of some tribe unknown to her. Making signs which all Indians, 
 even of widely separated tribes, readily comprehend, he assured 
 her of his good-will, and promised to protect her in her lonely 
 stay. Her fears at rest, she listened to him, and soon learned to 
 love him, and hand in hand they wandered through the beautiful 
 region like happy children. So they remained in the joy and inno- 
 cence of childish love till the time drew near for the warriors of 
 the Mohawks to reclaim her ; then the strange youth departed,. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 57 
 
 promising to come to her at this time the following year, and en- 
 joining on her strict secrecy. They made their farewells with many 
 tears, and the beautiful stranger disappeared down the clove, going 
 toward the river. On the morrow the Mohawks took away the 
 White Maiden, and from the new look of happiness in her tear- 
 stained eyes they guessed she had seen the great Manitou, her 
 father, and forebore from questioning her. For several years this 
 
 DELAWARE VALLEY. 
 
 idyl was repeated, till at last the youth one May-time found him- 
 self unable to tear himself from the side of his mountain love, and 
 so disaster came upon them. 
 
 Lingering with her till the last day, he persuaded her to go 
 eastward with him to his own people and there to abide, and she at 
 last consented. Wandering thus away from the white lodge they 
 forgot in their love and happiness the danger of detection before 
 
58 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 leavincr the mountain, and the Mohawks, findino^ the lodo-e deserted, 
 separated to search the mountain side for their lost goddess. One 
 of these searchers spied the lovers sitting on a mossy bank, and 
 immediately ran to tell his companions. Just at this time the 
 beauty was imposing a task on her swarthy lover ; it was to bring 
 her, from a point far down the rugged ravine, a bunch of blue- 
 bells she had noticed there a short time before, hanging over a 
 dizzy height. The youth sprang down from stone to stone, clinging 
 here and there to- overhano-insf branches and was soon lost to 
 sight. Stillness reigned in the shaded chasm, and the leaves cast 
 little flecks of moving shadow over the white leggings and snowy 
 blanket of the girl, and her long wavy hair fell in a golden shower 
 down her back. She leaned forward, watchinof the dense growth 
 below for some sicrn of moving branch, and listening for a 
 sound of cracking twig to give token of the youth's return. 
 Suddenly a wild yell above her re-echoed from side to side of the 
 rock-bound ravine, and seemed enclosing her in a mad babel of 
 sound. Starting up, she stood a moment with her hand pressed 
 to her breast, then seeing the advancing Mohawks as they came 
 rushing down the mountain, she seemed to divine with quick in- 
 stinct what they were seeking, and the hideous punishments that 
 awaited her lover, if he were caught. Instantlyshe turned and darted 
 down the clove like a flash of white light as the sun shone on her 
 garments where the shade divided as she passed. Down, down, 
 and the quick feet behind her coming nearer, while the savage 
 cries seemed in her very ears ! Much farther she cannot go, for 
 here is tho precipice of the Kaaterskill, descending straight across 
 the vale with sheer fall into dark, stony depths. Springing to the 
 rocky platform, at its edge she paused and turned, her blanket partly 
 falling from her gleaming shoulders, then, as if with sudden resolve, 
 as the yells came nearer, and the hands of her friends were 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 59 
 
 stretched out to save her, she sprang into mid-air, her hair 
 
 streaming out behind her and mingling with the folds of her 
 
 blanket. And now a great marvel came to pass, for before 
 
 their eyes, dazzled by the sun-illumined garments, the maiden 
 
 disappeared in a stream of water that plunged for the first time 
 
 in the memory of 
 
 man, over the cliff, ^S^*--.-'^'- 3s*i^^-^>^ 
 
 and went rushing 
 
 down the gorge 
 
 in white tumbling 
 
 foam. It seemed 
 
 to them that the 
 
 snowy garments 
 
 faded and melted into 
 
 a myriad glistening drops 
 
 of spray, and the floating 
 
 yellow hair became the 
 
 golden bars of sunlight on 
 
 the water. So the great 
 
 spirit took his daughter to 
 
 himself, and the saddened 
 
 and awe-struck savages went 
 
 their homeward way, not 
 
 daring now to wreak their 
 
 vengeance on the Catskill 
 
 chief who caused all the 
 
 trouble. But they never 
 
 forgot, says tradition, the old score against the river Indians, 
 
 and, till civilization drove them westward, they continued to 
 
 wreak their veno-eance on their enemies. 
 
 THE MAIU IN KAATERSKILL FALLS. 
 
6o THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 It is all a myth, of course, and yet at times by the witching 
 light of a midsummer moon, if you tune your thoughts aright, 
 the silvery white garments seem to gleam through the waters 
 of Kaaterskill, and the face will almost shape itself, then fade 
 away ; while the dripping, floating hair is often present near the 
 top, before the water breaks in a misty veil of spray. 
 
 There existed among the Indians when the first whites came 
 to them a tradition that in early times a vessel had been wrecked 
 on the Atlantic coast and most of the crew drowned. The few 
 who survived were pale of face, with flaxen or golden hair, 
 and soon mixed with the tribe of the Tuscaroras, then inhabiting 
 Virofinia. The Tuscaroras afterward moved northward and came 
 to western New York, still preserving this tradition of pale-faces. 
 The two stories would seem to have some dim connection, and it 
 is not beyond credence that Manitou's " White Maiden " was the 
 deserted baby of some Northman of old. 
 
 Amid the various comments on this tale, Captain Oldbore 
 surprised every one by a gracious corroboration of part of it, 
 which was the more to be wondered at because he had listened to 
 its recital with evident impatience. 
 
 " Now, that interesting fact about the ice-formation under the 
 fall is strictly true, and may be observed toward the latter part of 
 February or early in March, when the slow accretions of frozen 
 drops of spray have built a circular wall around the place where 
 the water drops into the pool, but the instances of its reaching the 
 top of the cliff are rare, though I have spoken with more than one 
 mountaineer who has seen it." 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler said civilly that " she hoped the story would 
 soon appear in print," and Miss Rutherford was reminded of 
 Bryant's verses on the Kaaterskill, which she recited : 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 6i 
 
 Midst greens and shades the Caaterskill leaps 
 From cliffs where the wood-fiower clings ; 
 
 All summer he moistens his verdant steps 
 
 With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs, 
 
 And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, 
 
 When they drip^with the rains of autumn-tide. 
 
 But when, in the forest bare and old, 
 
 The blast of December calls. 
 He builds in the starlight, clear and cold, 
 
 A palace of ice where his torrent falls, 
 With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair, 
 And pillars blue as the summer air. 
 
 For whom are those glorious chambers wrought, 
 
 In the cold and cloudless night ? 
 Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought. 
 
 In forms so lovely and hues so bright ? 
 Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell 
 Of this wild stream and its rocky dell. 
 
 'T was hither a youth of dreamy mood, 
 
 A hundred winters ago, 
 Had wandered over the mighty wood, 
 
 When the panther's track was fresh on the snow. 
 And keen were the winds that came to stir 
 The long dark boughs of the hemlock-fir. 
 
 Too gentle of mien he seemed, and fair, 
 
 For a child of those rugged steeps ; 
 His home lay down in the valley where 
 
 The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps ; 
 But he wore the hunter's frock that day. 
 And a slender gun on his shoulder lay. 
 
62 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 And liere he paused, and against the trunk 
 
 Of a tall gray linden leant, 
 Where the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk 
 
 From his path in the frosty firmament, 
 And over the round dark edge of the hill 
 A cold green light was quivering still. 
 
 And the crescent moon, high over the green, 
 
 From a sky of crimson shone. 
 On that icy palace whose towers were seen. 
 
 To sparkle as if with stars of their own. 
 While the water fell with a hollow sound, 
 'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around. 
 
 Is that a being of life that moves 
 Where the crystal battlements rise ? 
 
 A maiden watching the moon she loves. 
 At tlie twilight hour, v/ith pensive eyes ? 
 
 Was that a garment which seemed to gleam, 
 
 Betwixt the eye and the falling stream ? 
 
 'T is only the torrent tumbling o'er. 
 In the midst of those glassy walls ; 
 
 Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor 
 Of the rocky basin in which it falls. 
 
 'T is only the torrent — but why that start ? 
 
 Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart ? 
 
 He thinks no more of his home afar, 
 
 Where his sire and sister wait ; 
 He heeds no longer how star after star 
 
 Looks forth on the night as the hour grows late ; 
 He heeds not the snow-wreaths, — lifted and cast 
 From a thousand boughs by the rising blast. 
 
 His thoughts are alone of those who dwell 
 
 In the halls of frost and snow, 
 Who pass where the crystal domes upswell 
 
 From the alabaster floors below. 
 Where the frost-trees bourgeon with leaf and spray, 
 And frost-gems scatter a silvery day. 
 
 * And oh ! that those glorious haunts were mine ! ' 
 He speaks, and throughout the glen 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 63 
 
 Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine, 
 
 And take a ghastly likeness of men, 
 As if the slain by the wintry storms 
 Came forth to the air in their earthly forms. 
 
 There pass the chasers of seal and whale, 
 
 With their weapons quaint and grim. 
 And bands of warriors in glittering mail, 
 
 And herdsmen and hunters, huge of limb ; 
 There are naked arms with bow and spear, ^i 
 
 And furry gauntlets the carbine rear. 
 
 There are mothers, and oh ! how sadly their eyes 1 
 
 On their children's white brows rest ! ' 
 
 There are youthful lovers — the maiden lies 
 
 In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast ; 1 
 
 There are fair, wan women, with moonstruck air. 
 
 And snow-stars flecking their long loose hair. 
 
 They eye him not as they pass along. 
 
 But his hair stands up with dread, 
 When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng, 
 
 Till those icy turrets are over his head, 
 And the torrent's roar as they enter seems 
 Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams. 
 
 The glittering threshold is scarcely passed. 
 
 When there gathers and wraps him round 
 A thick white twilight, sullen and vast. 
 
 In which there is neither form nor sound ; 
 The phantoms, the glory, vanish all, 
 With the dying voice of the waterfall. 
 
 Slow passes the darkness of that trance. 
 
 And the youth now faintly sees 
 Huge shadows, and gushes of light that dance 
 
 On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees. 
 And walls where the skins of beasts are hung, 
 And rifles glitter, on antlers strung. 
 
 1 
 On a couch of shaggy skins he lies ; 
 
 As he strives to raise his head. 
 
 Hard-featured woodmen with kindly eyes 
 
 Come round him and smooth his furry bed. 
 
64 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 And bid him rest, for the evening star 
 Is scarcely set, and the day is far. 
 
 They had found at eve the dreaming one 
 
 By the base of that icy steep ; 
 When over his stiffening limbs begun 
 
 The deadly slumber of frost to creep, 
 And they cherished the pale and breathless form, 
 Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm. 
 
 Next morning- the skies are gray, and a cold, soaking rain is 
 falling. The disappointed pleasure-seekers look forth from be- 
 hind their windows and conclude to give up all open-air plans and 
 stay within doors warm, at least, and dry. The fire is alluring, 
 and one by one they settle down for a morning with books and 
 work and talk. Mrs. Schuyler is busy over a bit of knitting that 
 she calls her " kill-time," but which her husband has dubbed " the 
 spoil-sport," as he dreads with true masculine hostility her absorp- 
 tion in its mysteries. Miss Rutherford is arranging her botanical 
 specimens, while pretty Miss Polly is pulling the ears of a gray 
 pussy-cat in her lap, and rubbing it gendy under the chin. The 
 Literary Fellow is occupied with watching this performance, while 
 the Artist is making sly sketches of each one from his corner. As 
 for the captain — not long since a dangerous gleam shone in his 
 eye as he rose and stole quiedy from the room. Now he returns 
 with a neat roll of manuscript in his hand, at the sight of which an 
 uneasy stir runs through the party, and Miss Perkins groans 
 audibly. 
 
 " I thought it an excellent opportunity to read you my pages 
 on the ' Revolutionary Captivities.' In a few days more we shall 
 be going through the river valley again, and that region as well as 
 these mountains is concerned in the stories." 
 
 Of course he was politely urged to read, so unrolling his pa- 
 pers, he began at once. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 REVOLUTIONARY CAPTIVITIES. 
 
 65 
 
 It was the custom of our English cousins, in the early days of 
 revolt and trouble with the colonies, to use with unstinted zeal the 
 hate and cruelty of the red man as weapons against their rebellious 
 subjects. If the atmosphere be permeated with a subtle magnetic 
 fluid, as some spiritualists assert, on which passing events are 
 photographed in gesture and grouping of figures, then, to him who 
 has the " second siofht," the vallevs of the Hudson and Mohawk 
 
 GEORGE HALL S HOUSE. 
 
 rivers unroll one long panorama of human agony. Rapine, arson, 
 and murder marshal their forces in the ghostly procession. Wild 
 arms are raised to heaven in vain appeals for help. Women and 
 children are fleeing from demons in war-paint and feathers who 
 are in hot pursuit, while the smoke from burning barns and home- 
 steads seems to rise like incense to the heathen gods of War and 
 Death. Give voice to this phantasmagoria of horrors, and what a 
 wail of agony goes up in accusation ! Who was to blame ? 
 
 Perhaps the captivities were a degree worse than immediate 
 murder, for in the one case there ensued the lonsf march through 
 the great forests and across mountains and rivers to Canada, where, 
 
66 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 if the wretched one lived to reacli that destination, there awaited 
 him impressment into the British service, or an imprisonment 
 whose horrors were equal to his previous tortures by the savages ; 
 in the other case the tomahawk was at least a merciful shortening 
 of the death. 
 
 About two miles west of Catskill lived in those troubled days 
 the Dutch family of Schermerhorns. One son had married a 
 daughter of Mr. Scrope, who lived on Roundtop Mountain. An- 
 other son, Frederic, was one day sent to the mountain where 
 his brother had taken up his abode with his wife's people to obtain 
 his services in helping to get the Schermerhorn sheep driven 
 down from their mountain pasture. Arrived at his destination, 
 and greatly wearied from his long day's journey, he soon retired 
 to rest. In the early morning he was aroused by the screams of 
 his sister-in-law, who was alarmed by the appearance of some 
 Indians who were approaching the house. Long afterward, in 
 telling the story to his children Frederic used to recall how his dog 
 had howled when he left home the day before, and then he would 
 add : " Mine kindern, petter stay to home ven te dog howls ! " 
 
 Drawing on his clothes quickly he ran clown stairs to find the 
 family in great alarm. Mr. Scrope had been at work in the fields 
 but was coming back to the house now, having seen the approach 
 of the savages. Meanwhile the warriors seemed friendly enough 
 with their " How-do's " and inquiries for Bastyon, a son of the 
 house who was then absent in Sauo-erties. It was afterward 
 thought that their object in coming was to seize and kill this 
 Bastyon, who had once served them a mean trick in stealing from 
 them some hatchets and knives. Finding their inquiries for 
 the delinquent to be in vain, they concluded to satisfy their grudge 
 in some other way, and so began plundering the house, thereby 
 trying the frugal soul of Vrouw Scrope, who wept and fumed to no 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 67 
 
 ^ood purpose. One brave, possessed of unusual discernment spied 
 the liqen-chest in the corner, and breaking it open seized a 
 lono- uncut piece of the home-spun, and traiUng it proudly behind 
 him boasted : " Make Indian good shirt! " This was more than 
 could be endured by the woman who had spun and woven it with 
 
 dog's hole, PALENVILLE. 
 
 her own hands, and making a dash at the impious red man, Vrouw 
 Scrope shouted : " You no hef dat ! dat Bastyon's piece ! " 
 
 Old Mr. Scrope coming in at this juncture was filled with 
 horror at his wife's rashness and cried : " Vor Cot's sake, let dem 
 hef vat dey vill, you lose your het yet ! " But the warning proved 
 of no avail, for what was a Dutch vrouw's life worth to her 
 
68 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 despoiled of her store of linen, and the Indian soon settled the 
 point by killing the brave woman and laying her husband dead 
 beside her. The daughter, while this scene was beincr enacted 
 and all the Indians intent upon the issue, quickly snatched her baby 
 from the bed, and gathering her three other children together, fled 
 with them through a back door and hid with them in a field of rye. 
 
 The Indians soon fired the house and left, bearing with them 
 much plunder, including, no doubt, " Bastyon's piece," so valiantly 
 defended, and the boy Schermerhorn as a captive. 
 
 At their departure the terrified young mother crept from her 
 hiding-place, and with her little ones followed the Kiskatom creek 
 to the house of Mr. Timmerman, five miles away. Meanwhile the 
 husband, Schermerhorn, returned from his two days' journey to 
 mill, and found his home in ashes, with no trace of its inmates 
 but a few charred bones. Half crazed with grief at the possible 
 fate of his family, he at last found his wife and children and learned 
 from them the death of his parents and the captivity of his younger 
 brother. He quickly formed a party of men and went in pursuit 
 of the savages, but as well pursue the east wind, for their path 
 over the mountains was as trackless. 
 
 The story of the long march, the days of hunger and parching 
 thirst, through the summer heat, the weary feet bleeding and sore, 
 and yet the lips not daring to complain lest the tomahawk should 
 quickly settle all, makes a sad history indeed. 
 
 One night, encamped near Schoharie, the Indians drew forth 
 the scalps of the murdered Scropes and proceeded to dry them 
 on little hoops before the fire. One of the men, making a third 
 hoop, suddenly sprung up with a savage yell and made a dash at 
 Schermerhorn, who now stood transfixed with frifrht. Seizinsf the 
 boy by the hair, he made passes at him with the scalping-knife, 
 when the poor youth could endure no more and fell fainting with 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 69 
 
 terror and exhaustion at his captor's feet. The other Indians, im- 
 mensely diverted by this witty sally on the part of their companion, 
 rolled over and over on the ground screaming with laughter. On 
 another occasion the lad was made to " run the gauntlet," a hideous 
 custom rigidly adhered to by all Indians bearing away captives. 
 When approaching a settlement of friendly savages, the prisoner 
 was stripped naked and compelled to pass between two lines of 
 the villagers, whose custom was to shower on the victim all kinds 
 of torments in the shape of blows, pricks, and cuts from sharp 
 knives. Lucky was the man who came through the ordeal alive. 
 
 At Fort Niagara — Ne-a-^(2(2-ra the Indians called it always — 
 Schermerhorn's captors received eight dollars apiece for the 
 scalps they brought, that being the usual bounty paid by the Brit- 
 ish for such rebel head-gear, and forty dollars for their prisoner, 
 who was forthwith impressed into the army. From that time he 
 saw no more of home or friends till the year after the close of the 
 war, when he wandered back and at last found his parents living 
 in Hudson. 
 
 Along the line of the Hudson River, about half a mile from its 
 west bank, runs a line of abruptly rising hills, called " The Col- 
 laberg." Near Catskill they dip suddenly to the westward into a 
 narrow valley, across which hills rise again in higher crests toward 
 the mountains. Where Kaaterskill creek comes winding down from 
 its birthplace in the Catskills,'and crosses this lovely little valley, 
 there spreads out a plateau of fertile farm-land. There, in a shel- 
 tered spot, by a glassy pool, where willows dip and swing to their 
 long reflections in the water, and swallows go darting in and out 
 through the long summer afternoons, the Abiel family had reared 
 a home that was more like a rude fortress for their household 
 gods. The house is of stone, as the houses of the prosperous 
 Dutch were in those times, low and wide-spreading, with small 
 
70 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 windows, easily defended, and a great oaken house- door divided 
 across midway. 
 
 One evening, in the spring of 1781, the cows were chewing 
 peaceful cuds in the farm-yard, the hens were on the roost, and all 
 things outside had a " ready-for-bed " aspect, while within the 
 family were seated at supper. The Dutch were a silent folk, and 
 the Abiels were no exception to the rule, so that the picture of the 
 supper, viewed through the open upper half of the great door, was 
 that of a noiseless, pantomimic feast. Was it a real scene, or only 
 a vision ? Evidently the spectators, lurking without, determined 
 to try what stuff it might be made of, for suddenly a terrific war- 
 whoop filled all the quiet place with unearthly clamor. The family 
 spang up as one man, so schooled were they to expect danger, and 
 reached for the guns kept loaded and resting on brackets attached 
 to the huge beams overhead. But it was too late, and before a 
 blow could be struck they were surrounded by a band of Mohawks. 
 The treacherous slaves of the household either slunk away in hid- 
 ing or aided the Indians in securing the captives. The woman and 
 children were not molested, nor would David Abiel have been 
 taken, but for his incautious exclamation on recognizing one of his 
 Tory neighbors in his disguise of an Indian, and crying aloud 
 in his indignation : " What, is dat you ! " 
 
 Long years after, a sister of David Abiel was fond of relating 
 the story of the seizure, and how she had retained her presence of 
 mind sufficiently to slip under the table and take off the men's shoe- 
 and knee-buckles, anticipating their probable captivity ! No 
 climax of life or death could engross the Knickerbocker mind to 
 the exclusion of thrift. 
 
 Garrett Abiel, one of the younger sons, had been absent dur- 
 ing the day at Domine Schunneman's, and, returning in the even- 
 ing, heard the noises in the house and immediately understood 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. yi 
 
 what had happened. Hurrying away, he secured the help of a 
 near neisfhbor, and, returning, hid in the bushes near the barn. 
 As the savages passed out with their captives, young Abiel raised 
 his gun to shoot, but the neighbor stopped him, saying : " You 
 might kill your own father ! " 
 
 So the party passed along unhindered, to the rendezvous at Pine 
 Orchard on the mountains. Here they encamped, for Brant was in- 
 festing the mountains, preparing for a general descent upon the val- 
 ley ; meanwhile, parties were sent out here and there for Whig cap- 
 tives. Old David Abiel's reputation for patriotism, or attachment 
 to the cause of " rebellion," was as great as his fame for honesty and 
 bravery, so that he was, upon the whole, valuable, though too old 
 now for a soldier. So well was his character for probity recog- 
 nized, that some of his Tory neighbors in disguise, consorting 
 with Brant's men, induced the savages to put him on parole, think- 
 ing that the surest way to prevent him from making his escape. 
 At the close of their stay on the mountains, a large party of Whigs 
 from the valley made an attack, with the purpose of rescuing the 
 captives. Successful in the case of some of the victims, they failed 
 to rescue the Abiels, because of this very parole of the old man's. 
 Left in the rear of the departing Indians, they found the old man 
 plodding doggedly along after his red-skinned enemies, and 
 called upon him loudly to stop and turn about in his march. 
 
 " But no! " cried the honest Dutchman, whose brain was in- 
 capable of entertaining more subtle distinctions of morality than 
 just abstract right and wrong, " I hef given my word to the sal- 
 vages, end I must go with them ! " 
 
 Then there was a great time made over his obstinacy, and 
 his duty held up before him in various guises. He was finally 
 conjured, for the sake of his wife and children, to return and pro- 
 tect them and their home. Still the old man was unmoved, stand- 
 
72 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 ing squarely and half defiantly, lest any one, more bold than the 
 others, should lay hold of him and force him back to his home, and 
 yet the tears were rolling- down his honest cheeks as even his 
 naturally unimaginative mind portrayed for him the trials and 
 privations, perhaps even the death, that awaited him on the long 
 westward march ; and, on the other hand, the welcome home 
 where were his wife and loving children to soothe the cares of 
 coming years. It was a hard thing for these good neighbors to 
 fight, at risk of life, for the liberty of a man who would not take it 
 when it came, but only said, staunchly, as if defending his honor : 
 " Want wat baat het een mensch zoo hij de gehule wereld ge- 
 wint, en lijdt schade zijner zeile. Of wot zal een mensch geren, 
 tot lossing van zijne zeile ! " These are the words of Matthew : 
 " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his soul ? " 
 
 The domine came up at this pass, and hearing the state of 
 things gazed on his parishioner with a sorrowful heart, saying : " I 
 am sorry ; and I am rejoiced. Such honor is seen but in the true- 
 hearted and God shall reward it — our good Dutch Church is rep- 
 resented in you this day. and the fame thereof will go far among 
 the Gentiles," then the good old man lifted up his voice in 
 prayer, ending with the solemn apostolic benediction in Dutch : 
 " De genade onzes Heeven Jesus Christus zij met uwen geest ! 
 Amen." And Elder Abiel turned back to trace the weary road to 
 his captivity. 
 
 There are many versions of this captivity, one as authentic as 
 another, perhaps, but I choose this one with its noble picture 
 of the old Dutchman whose simple heart was incapable 
 of a broken promise, choosing hardship and pain — per- 
 haps death itself — with the consciousness of an unsullied honor, 
 rather than home and love and the peaceful joys of declining years, 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 73 
 
 purchased with a violated parole. Bless his old heart ! I can see 
 him yet, with his short, bandy legs clad in long hose and short 
 trunks, with his broad back and big hat, trudging honestly over 
 the trail toward Hunter. And yet there is, of course, an element 
 of absurdity in it all too. Did so simple a device as carrying him 
 off home whether or no never occur to the simple Boermen } 
 Surely they could so have saved his honor and his sacrifice at once. 
 
 The rage and disgust of his son Anthony must have been great 
 next morning, when the old man walked into the Indian camp by 
 Schoharie Kill and gave himself up. 
 
 Having spoken to the leader in the Indian tongue. Elder 
 Abiel was asked where he learned that langfuao-e. Receiving in 
 reply the answer that he had formerly been a trader among the 
 Mohawks, they treated him with some kindness during the re- 
 mainder of his journey. His son Anthony was obliged to run the 
 gauntlet more than once, and at the best showing they had 
 enough of hunger and fatigue and every hardship to endure. 
 
 On reaching the fort at Niagara, David Abiel was soon re- 
 leased on account of his age, but Anthony was kept for two years 
 longer in a vain attempt to force him into the British service, 
 when he escaped with the Snyders, an account of whose captivity 
 is found below. 
 
 About a mile north of the Blue Mountain Dutch Church, which 
 stands on a breezy hill-top, face to face with the panorama of the 
 Catskills, on a farm now in possession of the Valks, stands the 
 ruin of Captain Elias Snyder's homestead. Seemingly alone and 
 deserted now, it is yet haunted by ghostly memories that figure in 
 long by-gone dramas. To one of a sensitive fancy it is an evil 
 place of a dark night. I am told that it is no uncommon occurrence 
 for the old rooms to be once more lighted up with tallow-dips and 
 for the brieht fire of loes to be kindled aeain in the ereat cavern 
 
74 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 of a fireplace. Then the broad Dutch lasses with their long braids 
 hanging" from under the closely-tied caps, their quilted petticoats 
 balancing with the rigidity of big bells of brass, go swinging down 
 the centre of a reel, hand-in-hand with their " Garretjes " and 
 "Jacobs " and " Tjerks," whose breadth of beam in their duck-tail 
 coats, brave in huge buttons, is something marvellous to behold. 
 Sometimes it is a pas-seul which some awkward gallant executes 
 under the festoons of dried apples and red peppers that hang from 
 the beams. 
 
 The fun grows more excited, the lights flare up and gros- 
 muder is seen through the window preparing to open the little 
 door of the big oven beside the fireplace. 
 
 She is old and wrinkled, with a baleful light in her wicked eye, 
 as she leans with her long-handled shovel on which to slide out 
 the goodies baking in there. She lifts the latch when — puff! A 
 great blaze leaps out and devours her bodily before your eyes, and 
 not only her but the dancers, the dried apples, the red peppers, and 
 all in a fiery cauldron ! The moon has risen behind the old house 
 and now it shines, a Q^reat red ball, throusfh sash-less windows and 
 sill-less door- ways. And yet they say it is not all an illusion of the 
 moonlight — but to my story. 
 
 The Snyders were wood- choppers, and yet the father of 
 the family was also captain of militia, such were the mixed condi- 
 tions of this primitive life. As an officer of the rebels this captive 
 was a prize coveted by his Tory neighbors, since the reward given 
 for him, dead or alive, would be high. His danger was great as his 
 daily work led him away in the forest, sometimes quite alone, and 
 sometimes accompanied only by his son, Elias. One day they were 
 startled, while at work, by perceiving two parties of Tories and 
 Indians coming upon them from opposite directions. Dropping 
 their axes they ran wildly toward home, closely pursued by the 
 enemy. 
 
jvma . ri . - ■'"■■—■mmj^j-m i ■^^^h>*" 
 
 FKOFILE ROCK. 
 
76 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Amono- the Indians were two men well known to the set- 
 tiers as " John Rump " and " Hank's Ben." Nearing the house, 
 the Snyders found themselves cut off from safety there by another 
 party coming to meet them, so they stopped running and gave up. 
 Captain Snyder felt himself fortunate to get off with his life 
 and only a scalp wound, even though he must go into captivity. 
 
 The savages now proceeded to the house, from which the 
 women and children had fled to the woods, and rifled it of cloth- 
 ing, provisions, and money. Dividing the booty into packs, the 
 captors led the road, over which so many weary feet had passed to 
 Canada, or perished by the way. 
 
 Winding up the " clove " in the mountain the trail was a path- 
 way fit for fairy travellers. A carpet of soft gray and green moss^ 
 with now and then a patch of the graceful partridge-berry, that 
 prettiest of ground-runners, or the nodding plumes of princes- 
 feather, or the rich red-splashed leaves of the liver-wort, while 
 overhead arched whispering birches, whose white trunks gleamed 
 through the twiliirht of the forest like the robes of slim maidens 
 clad in bridal garments. Now and then a rustle, or a darting 
 form, gave hint of the wild pulsing life hidden in the heart of 
 the groves whose privacy these stealthy, murderous steps were in- 
 vading. But these lovely and delicate forms had no attraction for 
 those, who leaving home and friends for a long foot-journey filled 
 with danger and suffering, could think only of the simple joys and 
 home-peace left behind, and the torture and death that might 
 lurk ahead. 
 
 Taking an oblique path across the mountains they passed 
 through Palenville clove, and there one of the Indians climbed 
 upon a ledge near Profile Rock to look back over the valley before 
 proceeding farther. His two captives clambered up after him, and 
 here it was that, hidden by a projecting rock from the savages 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 77 
 
 below, Elias Snyder would have killed him, but the more prudent 
 father restrained his son, and thus one chance of liberty passed 
 by, and the Indian never guessed his danger. From here they 
 went southward across Pine Orchard near where the Laurel 
 House now stands, and so over between the two lakes to the 
 Schoharie Kill, which they waded breast high, walking on ten 
 miles farther without chanorino; their clothes. At the head of the 
 Schoharie Kill, in a ravine, was kept a store of corn for the wants of 
 the tribe as they went back and forth on these long marches, and 
 their hunting expeditions. Here they supplied themselves, and here 
 it was that " my poy, Elias," gave evidence of his Dutch shrewd- 
 ness. Finding his share of the burden too heavy to suit him 
 he began complimenting one of the braves on his great strength, 
 whereupon the besetting vanity of the Indian induced him to 
 transfer the larger part of Elias' corn to his own pack and carry it 
 away on his proud shoulders. Coming to the Genesee River 
 they met there a white woman of about twenty-five years of 
 age, in Indian dress, and carrying in her arms a baby in whose face 
 the Indian and white blood were traceable. Beside her was her 
 husband, a Seneca chief. She asked the Snyders many questions 
 about their homes and people, telling them that she had been 
 taken captive in the old French war and the Indians had brought 
 her up as one of themselves. She knew nothing now of her 
 people or their fate, and said that she felt no desire to return 
 to the whites. They were much struck by her beauty and intel- 
 ligence. 
 
 A funny example of the Indian taciturnity, or perhaps his idea 
 of courtesy, is given by Rockwell in his " Catskill Mountains." 
 He says : " The Indian who tomahawked Captain Snyder shaved 
 him twice a week but never spoke of, nor seemed to notice 
 the wounds on his head. 
 
78 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 The Snyders after their arrival at Niagara were sent to Mon- 
 treal, where they were closely questioned by the British officers, 
 and then assigned to a filthy and crowded prison called the " Berot." 
 Their food was stinted and of poor quality, they were infested with 
 vermin, and, to add to their suffering, they were treated with great 
 inhumanity by the Hessian guards. They often heard in Montreal 
 the yeii customary on entering the town with scalps, and saw from 
 thelf prison windows the hideous trophies carried by in triumph, 
 strung on long poles. 
 
 After a while the Snyders, and the Abiels of Catskill, who had 
 come hither during the previous year, were billeted on parole 
 among the Canadians of the little island of Jesu, farther up the 
 river. Rockwell mentions as one of the hardships they had here 
 to endure, that " the women were many and ill-natured, and 
 tried to prevent their making tea ! " 
 
 In August, 1782, Captain Abiel was sent home under escort, 
 being over fifty, and hence not formidable as an active enemy, nor 
 useful as an impressed soldier. It was only the scalps of the old 
 men, and of women and children, that were of value. 
 
 Here our captives lived in the little settlement for some months 
 in comparative peace, despite the numerous and anti-tea women, 
 and now they began to lay plans for another escape. And many 
 a careful parley was necessary to undertake so hazardous an enter- 
 prise, for even supposing they could pass the argus eyes of their 
 watchful enemies, there lay before them the march of several 
 hundred miles through a trackless wilderness without a guide ; and 
 of necessity, with no provision for their hunger other than the 
 watchful care of Him who cares for the sparrows. One obstacle 
 to their plans lay in the impossibility of convincing Captain Snyder 
 that his parole was a matter of no binding character. Argue as 
 they would, he came back always to the one point — a man's word 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 79 
 
 is his oath, and there was an end of the matter. A Dutchman's 
 word of honor in those days was as great a security as iron chains. 
 At last, however, the conditions of the parole were thoughtlessly 
 broken in some way not given, by the officers themselves, and the 
 scrupulous Hollander felt himself released from the bond. 
 
 The party obtained, without difficulty, a passport to Montreal, 
 where they purchased as great curiosities, pretending ignorance of 
 their use, three pocket compasses. The Fourth of July being at 
 hand they T?.''ovided themselves with four gallons of wine, says my 
 trusty chronicler, two of rum, and sufficient loaf-sugar to sweeten 
 this most ungodly drink, and then they set themselves about the 
 work of " celebration." We are not told that the Abiels and 
 Snyders, now three in all, consumed this amount unaided, but I am 
 unable to find any trace of more members of the celebrating party. 
 
 The loth of September was the day finally fixed upon for es- 
 cape ; accordingly, while the Canadian family upon whom they 
 were quartered were at supper, the Snyders procured three loaves 
 of bread and some pork from the cellar, secreting them in a con- 
 venient place. While vespers were in progress, they stole away, 
 and joining the younger Ablel and a Chas. Butler, of Philadelphia, 
 started for the lower end of the island. The night was stormy and 
 dark, and the river swollen and very rough, but they finished that 
 portion of the perilous journey in safety, landing several miles 
 down the river. In a day or two they began the long march 
 homeward, coming soon upon an encampment of Indians, whom 
 they avoided just in time to escape a second capture. The great- 
 est danger soon threatened them, for the bread now crave out and 
 the awful problem of providing sustenance by the way appeared 
 for solution. However, they pressed on, trusting to find some- 
 thing to stay the pangs of hunger. In any event it were better to 
 die in a determined effort to reach home and the duties that called 
 
8o THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 so loudly for their presence, than to lie pent up on the little island 
 while their neighbors and friends were fighting for liberty. 
 
 After four days of hunger they found spignet root and lived on 
 that till they reached the Connecticut River. Here, by the river- 
 side, by a deserted camp-fire, " my poy Elias," ever lucky and 
 thrifty, found the thigh-bone of a moose, the remnant of some 
 hunter's feast. Nothing remained but the sinews and bone, but he 
 burned it and, powdering it, lived on it for three days. Soon they 
 succeeded in their efforts to catch trout in the river, and then the 
 supply of rations began to improve. They concluded to cross the 
 river, and Elias, attempting to swim it, narrowly escaped drown- 
 ing, for, exhausted by fasting and fatigue, he sunk under the light 
 burden of his pack, but making one vigorous effort gained shal- 
 lower water and waded ashore. 
 
 "Not far from this point" — I quote from Rockwell — "they 
 found the first traces of civilized inhabitants. They ate black- 
 berries, in a new field covered with them, and some two miles be- 
 yond came to a log-house, the owner of which was working in a field. 
 Captain Snyder and Abiel went toward him to inquire for pro- 
 visions, while the others entered the cabin and helped themselves 
 to part of a loaf of bread, which was all the provisions the poor 
 man had. The same evening they went about a mile farther, to 
 the house of a man named Williams, whose family kindly gave up 
 to them their supper of hasty-pudding and moose pie. Here, they 
 remained all nirr-ht, and in the mornincr several of the neic^-hbors 
 came in with a magistrate named Ames, who, after examining 
 them, furnished Captain Snyder with a passport for himself and 
 his comrades to the head-quarters of General Bailey, at the lower 
 Coos. They were now in New Hampshire, among a very humane 
 and generous people, who liberally supplied their wants. But such 
 was their appetite, after enduring extreme hunger, that they com- 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 8i 
 
 monly ate six meals a day of light food, and thus made small pro- 
 gress. Sunday, September 29th, they reached General Bailey's 
 quarters, who received them with great kindness. He ordered 
 shoes to be made and mended for them ; and there they remained 
 two days, when Captain Snyder, having been furnished with a 
 horse by the General, left his companions, and returned home 
 through Massachusetts and Connecticut, crossing the Hudson 
 River at Poughkeepsie. The others went by way of Sunderland 
 and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and crossed the river near Kinder- 
 hook. Captain Snyder reached home first, where he found his 
 relatives living and in good health. The joy of their meeting we 
 need not attempt to describe." 
 
 So ends the story of this captivity in Canada, but not the list 
 of those who suffered in like manner. There were many others 
 whose names we come upon here and there in dusty old chroni- 
 cles, and many more whose names we know not, whose unnoticed, 
 insignificant lives slipped away in the shade, and ended in wig- 
 wams, long years after, in the far-away wilderness. Many women 
 and little children were taken, and very few of these ever reached 
 Canada and the British. The braves took them for themselves, 
 and the mothers wore away their darkened days carrying burdens, 
 working the soil to raise corn and lentils, and bearing children to 
 their loathed captors. Happy was she whose child was left to her 
 then, at any price, for oftener the little one and its mother found 
 homes far asunder. 
 
 One account of a capture by the Indians is very touching in its 
 simple pathos. Among the Huguenots who settled near King- 
 ston in those early days was Louis Dubois and his wife, Catharine 
 Lefever Dubois, and three children. The wife and children were 
 carried off with some other persons in one of the frequents attacks 
 of unfriendly savages. The distracted husband sought for them 
 
82 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 in vain, and at last, as all hope of ever finding his dear ones 
 had left him, he one day received a visit from an Indian to whom 
 he had once done a kindness. The Indian told him that by follow- 
 inof the course of the Rondoiit, and then Wallkill Creek, branching- 
 off again along the course of a smaller tributary, the captives could 
 be found in an Indian camp. It is worthy of note here, that 
 the spot indicated was about one hundred yards east of the 
 Shawangunk Creek, at a point very near where the Shawangunk 
 Dutch Church now stands. 
 
 Thus advised, Dubois immediately started with a small party of 
 men, with dogs, guns, and provisions, marching through the forest 
 twenty-six miles to the appointed place. 
 
 Before reaching the camp they met an Indian who wellnigh 
 put a stop to the expedition by shooting at Dubois, but fortunately 
 the arrow missed its mark, and Dubois, falling on the savage, killed 
 him with his sword before the other Indians were warned of the 
 approach of the rescuing party. 
 
 Proceeding now with the greatest care, they came to a place 
 where they could look down from a slight eminence on the camp, 
 where a remarkable scene met their eyes. The Indians were pre- 
 paring to march westward, and liad decided to kill their captives, 
 thus obviating the necessity of feeding them on the journey. The 
 wretched women and children were tied to trees, while about 
 them were piled dried sticks and leaves showing the fiendish pur- 
 pose of burning them alive. 
 
 Mrs. Dubois, however, being a woman of great piety and faith, 
 and possessed withal, of a marvellously sweet and powerful voice, 
 say the old chronicles, in the midst of these preparations, began to 
 sing, partly to encourage, perhaps, her terrified little ones, and also 
 to sustain her own soul through this dreadful ordeal. The song 
 that rose to her lips was a paraphrase of that beautiful psalm, 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 83 
 
 descriptive of the captive Jews by the rivers of Babylon, as with 
 harps hung on the willows they sat them down and wept. The 
 
 Indians, unused to such 
 
 1 *** 
 
 sweet music and attract- 
 ed by the song, when 
 she had finished came 
 crowding around her, 
 bidding her sing again, 
 and this was the scene 
 that met the eyes of 
 her husband and friends 
 as they came stealing 
 through the under- 
 growth. The captive 
 with arms tied behind 
 her, her lovely face lift- 
 ed to heaven, was sing- 
 ine with all her soul 
 mounting 
 
 u p w a,r d 
 through her wonderful 
 voice, while the savages 
 stood about her, trans- 
 fixed with delight, and the 
 children and two neighbor 
 women who were tied to 
 trees near by were listening 
 to the holy words, their faces, 
 all tear-stamed, takmg on climbing up, palenville overlook. 
 
 Suddenly one of the dogs that accompanied the searchers set 
 up a howl and startled the savages, while they, thinking a large 
 
84 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 party of unfriendly men were upon them, were immediately on 
 the alert. There was nothing- for it now but prompt action on the 
 part of Dubois and his men, for the Indians far outnumbered 
 them, so they set up a great shouting and hallooing before makino- 
 their appearance, as if twice their number were there, and the sav- 
 ages immediately rushed off to save themselves in the wilderness. 
 Cutting hastily the cords that bound the captives, they dashed away, 
 and the poor frightened wretches fancying themselves surprised 
 by other savages dashed after their cruel captors in a panic. 
 Dubois, however, soon overtook his wife and children, and great 
 indeed was the joy of that deliverance. The poor woman's stout 
 heart gave out at last, and she swooned away in her husband's 
 arms. 
 
 She came back to her home and friends, with herself and the 
 little ones unharmed, but her face, still young and fair, was from 
 that time framed in white locks instead of brown, and till her 
 death, many years after, she carried, as a badge of her awful sus- 
 pense and suffering, her long, wavy hair turned snowy white. 
 
 The dinner-bell somewhat damaged the effect of the last sen- 
 tence, but each hastened to make a kind criticism on the Captain's 
 stories ; even Miss Polly was somewhat melted. 
 
 Coming out of the dining-room, a burst of sunshine on the 
 veranda caused universal rejoicing. There was a rush for hats 
 and walking-sticks, the more prudent securing umbrellas, and the 
 usual hegira took place. Troops of laughing girls and a few 
 dapper youths went to the tennis ground, the children to the 
 swings and croquet, while the stout dowagers took possession of 
 the veranda, sending even the babies with their nurses out into 
 the delicious air. The energetic Miss Perkins started out to ex- 
 plore the little village accompanied by John Grant, whom nothing 
 less than the attractions of so bright and pretty a girl would have 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 85 
 
 tempted from a lazy afternoon under the trees in a hammock ; for 
 he fitted well the old descriptive doggerel, " long and lazy." 
 
 Many a pretty bit of rock and glen rewarded them, however, 
 for taking to the bank of the stream, a course always productive 
 of good results in a hilly country. They followed it upward, on be- 
 yond the old mill, past a charming house that rumor says was 
 made out of a barn, and so along by waterfalls and miniature 
 rapids till well up the mountain they sat down to rest near where 
 a bridge crosses the chasm, under the shadow of a great rock. 
 The climb had made them very warm, and the shade was pro- 
 portionately grateful. Miss Polly leaned back against the rock and 
 listened to the voice of her comrade, as it mingled with the tinkle 
 and murmur of the stream, till she be^jan to think the talk was eet- 
 ting rather personal. Suddenly her eyes were fixed on the rocks 
 beyond and above them, and she cried out : 
 
 " Oh, stop, please ! There is an eavesdropper, and a most un- 
 canny one too ! " 
 
 Above them leaned a giant face cut in the rock, as if by the 
 cunning chisel of man. The Literary Fellow readily recognized it 
 as beincr the well-known " Profile Rock," and conoratulated Miss 
 Polly on their narrow escape from passing it unnoticed. 
 
 " He looks as if set here to guard some treasure, — you know 
 there is endless gold in these hills." 
 
 " Then let 's go instantly and begin looking for some ! " 
 
 So saying, the indefatigable maiden sprung up, and they con- 
 tinued their upward walk. 
 
 Gold has been found, and, perhaps, silver, at various times in 
 the Catskills, but no success seems to attend its removal ; and, in- 
 deed, it has seemed almost impossible to find a second time the 
 lucky spot. The Indians believed that the Great Spirit, who had 
 a home in these hills, was displeased at any search for gold here. 
 
S6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 and would ever lay obstacles in the way of its removal. The first 
 knowledge of its presence here, by the whites, was on an occasion 
 of a peace parley between Wilhemus Kieft, Director of the New 
 Netherlands, and a band of Mohawk chiefs. Kieft was accom- 
 panied by Mynheer Adrian Van der Donk, his learned friend, and 
 they both noticed a pigment that one of the chiefs used in decora- 
 ting himself, and were struck with its weight and shining yellow 
 appearance. They procured a lump and took it back with them to 
 New Amsterdam (New York), where it was assayed, and yielded 
 gold to about the value of three guilders. Overjoyed at this dis- 
 covery, our discreet Dutch friends kept it a profound secret. 
 They sent a party of men back to the Mohawks, who furnished 
 them with a guide, and the result of this expedition was a bucket- 
 ful of ore, equally productive of the precious metal. The chiefs 
 looked very gloomy at this spoliation of their god's territory, and 
 predicted that no good would come of it. Kieft, however, sent a 
 trusty messenger — Arent Corsen — to Holland, with a bagful of the 
 gold, as a welcome token to the home Government of the here- 
 tofore unexpected richness of this New-World plantation. 
 
 Corson embarked, about Christmas, on an English ship, intend- 
 ing to cross afterward to Rotterdam, but the vessel was wrecked, 
 and all on board perished. Thus Manitou punished their cupidity. 
 In 1647, when Petrus Stuyvesant took charge of New Nether- 
 land, Kieft embarked for Holland, carrying another sackful of the 
 Catskill ore, but that, too, proved a Jonah, and all on board this 
 ship went to the bottom with the treasure. 
 
 A few years afterward. Mynheer Brant Arent Van Schlechten- 
 horst, agent for the Patroon of Renselaerwyck, purchased for the 
 Patroon, a tract of land on the mountains, and leased it in farms. 
 A young Dutch girl, daughter of one of these farmers, found, one 
 day, in her rambles on the mountains, a piece of some white, 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 87 
 
 shining substance, which was immediately supposed to be silver, 
 and sent to Van Schlechtenhorst. He dispatched his son post-haste 
 to investigate the matter, and the young man arrived at the close 
 of an autumn day at the farmer's house. The evening he devoted to 
 looking about the place, being much struck by the beauty of 
 the situation the farmer had chosen for his home, beside a tink- 
 ling little mountain stream. In the night, however, this little 
 stream rose to a great flood, the rain fell in torrents, and the 
 heavens were rent with the fury of the storm. The house went 
 floating down the stream, and the young Van Schlechtenhorst barely 
 escaped with his life. As soon as possible he returned home, say- 
 ing that nothing would induce him again to brave the spirit of 
 those enchanted hills, who was evidently determined that none 
 should find his hoarded treasure. 
 
 Soon after these events, a great quarrel arose between the 
 doughty Petrus Stuyvesant and the haughty Patroon Van Rense- 
 laer, and the Patroon's agent was thrown into prison at New Am- 
 sterdam. This abode must have chilled his adventurous spirit and 
 quenched his thirst for gold, for we hear no more of his attempts, 
 in the dispute that followed about the right to the Catskill lands. 
 
 Some of the treasure brought to the port of New York under 
 the rule of the English Col. Fletcher, when so many pirates were 
 said to have been harbored in that wicked city, was buried, says 
 tradition, on the shores of the Hudson, and much was secreted in 
 the Catskills, whether buried or hidden in its numerous caves is 
 left untold. Certain it is that Captain Kidd, one of the boldest and 
 most successful of these pirates, is known to have taken a journey 
 into the mountains, on his return from one rich expedition, and 
 some important business connected with his plunder must have 
 carried him there. Therefore we see clearly that John Grant's tale 
 of Kidd's adventure here must have the best of claims to be set 
 down with Captain Oldbore's authenticated facts. 
 
88 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 On South Mountain Miss Polly was much impressed with 
 the huge boulders of pudding-stone that lie scattered about there 
 as if they had rained down from above. Having expressed that 
 idea she was startled by the reply, " and so they did," from the 
 Literary Fellow. 
 
 " Oh ! I see you do not believe me. Well, it is an Indian 
 legend with whatever value you choose to put upon it." 
 
 So he told her the story of the Stone Giants. 
 
 These dread foes were said to be descended from a family near 
 the Mississippi, and wandering away in the wilderness they forgot 
 in their sufferings that they were men. Like beasts, they devoured 
 the flesh of men when they found a man to kill. They so hardened 
 the skin of their bodies by various practices, among which was 
 rolling in the sand, that the arrows of the Iroquois ratded in vain 
 on their toughened hides. They fought many successful battles 
 against their enemies, and pressed forward to the Catskills. Here 
 they lived for a time in caves, descending upon the tribes about 
 the region of Stony Clove and Windham, as those parts are now 
 called, and carrying away captives, to devour alive in their caves 
 about South Mountain and Overlook. At last the ereat Manitou 
 became exasperated, and finding that his children could not drive 
 them out unaided, went himself against them. In the disguise of 
 a giant he marshalled them as leader, brandishing a huge club, and 
 led them forth to find their enemies. ThrouLrh all the windinor 
 paths of the mountains he led them a day's journey, bringing them, 
 all unsuspecting, to his own South Mountain, — some versions have 
 it Indian Head, — and there in the darkness he made ereat rocks 
 to fall from heaven and crush them. Unto this day, there lie the 
 great boulders of pudding-stone, as their monuments. It would 
 be a fine corroboration to roll one down the mountain side and 
 find the remains of a fierce demon beneath ! 
 
THE LAND OF RIP J^AN WINKLE. 
 
 89 
 
 Early in the morning of the fohowing day the party were once 
 more on the march. A carriage-drive brought them to the station at 
 Haines' Corners, and here presently came the snorting little fiend 
 of an engine to drag its freight of passengers through the strong- 
 holds of the great Manitou. What a desecrating thought! No 
 wonder the heavens are frowning and the mountain sides seem to 
 threaten instant destruction, as they speed away under the 
 shadows ! 
 
 VIEWS IN STONY CLOVE. 
 
 At Tannersville junction they left the train and walked 
 throuo^h the " Notch. " Two colossal walls of stone towered hi^h on 
 either side, and an icy chill struck to the marrow as they passed be- 
 tween. A spell seemed on the place, and no one spoke a word. 
 Mrs. Schuyler drew her shawl more closely about her and 
 shivered, while every one looked apprehensively up from time to 
 time as if expecting the great rocks to close in, crushing these 
 audacious intruders. On the way a great black pool opened to 
 view, reflecting in its depths the frowning masses above. The ef- 
 
qo 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 91 
 
 feet was weird, and Miss Rutherford murmured : " Poe should have 
 seen and immortaHzed this spot." 
 
 At Edgewood the party regained its spirits. The sun came 
 out illuminating between soft clouds the panorama that unfolds 
 itself there. The northern view is bounded by the two mountains 
 forming the Notch, but far away southward the hills roll away like 
 the receding waves of a vast ocean. 
 
 Through the fine farming country to Phoenicia, they then go 
 by the train again, and thence westward to Dry Brook valley and 
 
 FARM-HOUSES NEAR PHCENICIA. 
 
 the head waters of the Delaware. They felt they could not miss 
 a glimpse, even if it must be from the window of a railroad train, 
 of so lovely a country as that. Back again now to West Hurley, 
 and there they take mountain wagons for Overlook. Not one of 
 them all was loath to lie down that night, and sleep as only 
 the care-free or the thoroughly weary ever do sleep. 
 
 The Overlook is that part of the mountain where the early 
 Dutch settlers believed that Hendrick Hudson kept vigil over 
 his loved river, and it is on the cliff near the house where 
 
92 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Cooper places Natty Bumpo when he looked forth and saw 
 " all creation." 
 
 " ' I have travelled the woods for fifty-three years,' " said Leath- 
 er-Stocking, " ' and have made them my home for more than 
 forty : and I can say that I have met but one place that was more 
 to my liking ; and that was only to eyesight, and not for hunting 
 or fishing.' " 
 
 " ' And where was that } ' " asked Edwards. 
 
 " ' Where ! why, up on the Catskills. I used often to go up 
 into the mountains after wolves' skins and bears ; once they 
 brought me to get them a stuffed painter ; and so I often went. 
 There 's a place in them hills that I used to climb to when I 
 wanted to see the carryings on of the world, that would well pay 
 any man for a barked shin or a torn moccasin. You know the 
 Catskills, lad, for you must have seen them on your left as you 
 followed the river up from York, looking as blue as a piece 
 of clear sky, and holding the clouds on their tops, as the smoke 
 curls over the head of an Indian chief at a council fire. Well, 
 there 's the High-peak and the Round -top, which lay back, like a 
 father and mother among their children, seeing they are far above 
 all the other hills. But the place I mean is next to the river, 
 where one of the ridges juts out a little from the rest, and where 
 the rocks fall for the best part of a thousand feet so much up and 
 down that a man standincr on their edofes is fool enough to think 
 he can jump from top to bottom.' " 
 
 " ' What see you when you get there ? ' " asked Edwards. 
 
 " ' Creation ! ' " said Natty, dropping the end of his rod into the 
 water, and sweeping one hand around him in a circle, ' " all creation, 
 lad. I was on that hill when Vaughan burnt Sopus, in the last 
 war ; and I seen the vessels come out of the Highlands as plainly 
 as I can see that lime-scow rowing into the Susquehanna, though 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 93 
 
 one was twenty times farther from me than the other. The river 
 was in sight for seventy miles under my feet, looking like a curled 
 
 shaving, _ _ fe=r^^^-^ 
 
 though 
 
 i t w as 
 
 eight 
 long 
 miles to 
 its bank. 
 I saw 
 the hills 
 in the 
 Hamp- 
 shire 
 
 ^^■Sl^ 
 
 '"^^ 
 
 grants, 
 the hiofh- 
 
 lands of ^'' " 
 
 the riv- 
 er, and all that God 
 had done or man could 
 do, as far as the eye 
 could reach, ^ you 
 know that the Indians 
 named me for my sight, lad, 
 — and, from the flat on the 
 top of that mountain, I have 
 often found the place where Albany 
 stands ; and, as for Sopus, the day the 
 royal troops burned the town the smoke 
 seemed so niorh that I thought I could 
 hear the screeches of the women.' " 
 
 dominie's face. 
 
94 
 
 view. 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 It must have been worth the toil to meet with such a glorious 
 
 " ' If being the best part of a mile in the air, and having men's 
 farms and houses at your feet, with rivers looking like ribbands, and 
 mountains bigger than the " vision " seeming to be haystacks of 
 green grass under you, gives any satisfaction to a man, I recom- 
 mend the spot ! ' " 
 
 So it was that when our pilgrims came to see the attractions of 
 
 
 ECHO LAKE. 
 
 Overlook and its views, that all its associations came up, first sug- 
 gested by one, then by another, until even Captain Oldbore waxed 
 eloquent over the burning of Esopus as it lay to the south of them. 
 
 At Echo Lake they were impressed with a certain air of mys- 
 tery that seemed to permeate the place, and John Grant promised 
 them a legend concerning it to be told that night in the moonlight, 
 over in the grove near the tower. 
 
 Here it was, by the lake-side, that they fell in with old Stubble, 
 the mountain seer. For so many years that the memory of man 
 seems to run not to the contrary, he has presided as a sort of 
 divinity over these mountains. Indeed, by his own " cackleation " 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 95 
 
 — as he calls it — he must be fully two hundred years old, though the 
 ordinary observer would hardly give him more than sixty winters. 
 He is renowned for his shrewd wit, his accurate knowledge of the 
 Catskills, and his highly apocryphal yarns. As for the latter, it 
 would be a hardy man indeed who would dare to correct his 
 stories the second time. If you would enjoy him to the full, you 
 must take him at his own valuation and listen respectfully. He 
 took a sudden fancy to Miss Rutherford, and when the plan of 
 walking back to the hotel through the woods was proposed, he 
 hitched up his butternut overalls, expectorated with great dex- 
 terity at the knot of a young birch-tree trunk a few yards distant, 
 and spoke : 
 
 " Naow ef ye say so, I '11 jest pilot ye up that mounting thoo 
 the woods, an' 't ain't no sich easy thing ez you think neither, ef 
 the path is blazed, which them blazes is all growed over 'bout." 
 
 Half way up he stopped to " blow ye," he said, and resting 
 one foot on a fallen tree and leaning his arm on the bent knee, 
 asked, •' Ben to the falls in the Plattekill I sposin ?" 
 
 On being informed that although they had not, they fully 
 intended doing so, he announced with perfect simplicity : 
 
 " Them falls useter run tother way. I recklect it puffectly well. 
 All that water run west inter the Schoharie Kill." 
 
 Every one seemed struck speechless by this stupendous lie save 
 Miss Rutherford, and her social tact came to fill the significant silence. 
 
 " Indeed, that 's an interesting thing to remember! " 
 
 " Aint it, now ? " he continued, evidently pleased by her ready 
 credence. " Yaas, that was the spring I got word from my 
 brother in West Constant, saying he 's sick, and wantin' me to 
 come on. But takes a sight 'o money to git thet fur, and a body 
 hez to begin to cumerlate (accumulate) long afore — so I coulden' 
 go,*but that 's the year, nigh bout fifty year ago I guess, that the 
 water in that thar stream turned en begun to run tother way." 
 
96 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 After some reflection most of the party seemed to look on this 
 as a masterpiece, the Literary Fellow especially seemed to admire 
 Stubble's talent, and nothing less than taking the old man up to 
 the hotel to dine would satisfy him. 
 
 That evening by the fitful light of the moon, as clouds now 
 and then darkened its disc, only to pass and let all its radiance 
 down into the valley, the story of Echo Lake was told. 
 
 HAIDONI AND THE VAMPYRES. 
 
 " Haidoni was a hero of 
 orreat fame amoncr the six na- ^ 
 tions and the Seneca tribe. So 
 great was his bravery and his / 
 pride in showing it, that Mani- 
 tou was especially favorable to 
 him, and helped him through 
 
 many of his difficult exploits, m 
 
 -^^ 
 
 
 
 Not the least of these had been 
 an excursion alone to the Cher- 
 okees in search of scalps and glory. The Iro- 
 quois counted life welllost for the latter achieve- 
 ment. Taking nothing for his long journey to 
 the Western plains but his bow and arrows, 
 and a little pouchful of parched and ground 
 corn, which has great sustaining qualities, he 
 set out. After long wandering with many re- 
 markable experiences, and escapes from death, -^ 
 he came to a Cherokee council fire. The council 
 
 , , . 1 , i- , vampvre's den, and 
 
 broke up m a dance, and soon one ot the young death of stone giant. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 97 
 
 braves wandering into the bushes, our hero quickly despatched him 
 without noise and secured his scalp. He got three similar trophies 
 in this manner and then left, stealing away through the undergrowth 
 to escape detection. On his homeward journey, became to a lodge 
 in a lonely place, and waiting here in the same manner as before, 
 soon secured the life and scalp of its owner. Entering the lodge 
 in search of plunder he found food and tobacco, having enjoyed 
 which, he lay down on the bed in the corner, and soon fell asleep. 
 He was awakened by the entrance of an old squaw, who, mis- 
 taking him for her murdered son, said: " My son, I am going 
 away, and will not be back till to-morrow." When she had left 
 him, he sprang up, and, hastily appropriating what food could be 
 found, fled. And none too soon was his flight begun, for his 
 inroads having been traced he was hotly pursued, and barely 
 escaped, to tell the tale of his prowess, and display his four scalps 
 about the friendly fires of his own people. 
 
 Haidoni's favorite employment was hunting deer, and his cus- 
 tomary hunting-ground the lake behind Overlook Mountain. Here, 
 on dark nights, he would paddle noiselessly in his bark canoe, hid- 
 den by green boughs in front of him, and with a flaring pine knot 
 fastened at the prow. The timid creatures, attracted by the light, 
 would come to the water's edge, when a noiseless arrow speeding 
 on its unerring errand of death finished the story. Sometimes as 
 many fine bucks as the fingers on both his hands, he was said to 
 have killed thus in a night. But one night, as he stole along seek- 
 ing here and there for the shadow on the shore, and the two bright 
 dazzled eyes that indicated his prey, his usual good genius seemed 
 to have deserted him, for not one shot did he get, and already the 
 long hours had worn away half the night. Stillness covered the 
 lake like a mantle, and brooded over it like a foreboding of evil, so 
 that when at long intervals the far-off cry of a panther or the splash 
 
98 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 of a fish on the water broke the quiet for an instant, the fleeting 
 noise seemed only to make the silence more oppressive. Sud- 
 denly he perceived the two fiery balls by the lake-side, though there 
 was no crackling of twigs ; the silence seemed deeper than ever, 
 but there were the bright eyes. For a moment he hesitated, then 
 pulled the bow-string, when out on the night air rung such a shriek 
 of wild inhuman pain that his arm fell at his side, and his heart 
 stopped with terror. No more shooting that night, so he hastily 
 guided his canoe across the lake, and climbed up the high side of 
 Overlook, to escape the dismal neighborhood of the lake. On the 
 top were dry leaves in plenty, and parched corn, all hidden in a 
 cave he knew of, and, making for that, he soon satisfied his hunger, 
 and prepared his bed for the few remaining hours before dawn. 
 Passing out to a little spring in the hill-side, he stooped beside a 
 great hollow log to quench his thirst. He suddenly felt himself 
 seized by the leg, and, reaching out, clutched a warm human hand. 
 Out from the loof he draorQfed an Indian maiden, whose features he 
 could now see by the light of the rising moon to be convulsed 
 with terror. Her fears being soothed, she told him her story. 
 
 She said she had become separated from her tribe with her 
 sister, as they were on a hunting expedition on these mountains, 
 and they had wandered together through the trackless wilderness, 
 sufferinof untold acronies. This Overlook Mountain, she said, was 
 infested with vampires, who nightly pursued them to suck their 
 blood. Exhausted at last, they had sunk down and fallen asleep. 
 How long they slept she could not tell, but early in the night, 
 while Haidoni had been hunting on the lake, she was awakened 
 by a sound as of some one eating and drinking beside her. 
 Starting up, she beheld a vampire sucking her sister's blood and 
 eating her fiesh, now dead. His form was so frightful, with its 
 long beard dripping blood and great glaring eyes of fire, that she 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 99 
 
 fled through the woods wildly seeking a hiding-place. The vam- 
 pire, not relishing the loss of so dainty a meal, pursued her closely, 
 giving forth a fearful war-whoop! (Fancy a ghost with a war- 
 
 %yV,,.jK 
 
 
 ,^^K ^^v^^ 2V ' y 
 
 
 
 
 PILGRIM S PASS. 
 
 whoop !) Sliding quickly into the hollow log, the vampire rushed 
 past her, not seeing, and probably passed on to the lake-side, for 
 not long after she heard a terrific shriek, and the echoes repeating 
 it by the shores of the hill-bound water. 
 
100 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 " He is dead, then," said Haidoni, " for I shot, a short while 
 since, a creature which was no deer, and its death yell was what 
 you have heard." 
 
 ,,, 
 
 
 ^%*»' 
 
 
 A 
 
 '&^^ 
 
 "/ to 
 
 TURTLE ROCK. 
 
 The young squaw went with her deliverer, and after several more 
 meetings with vampires that night, and victories over the same, 
 she concluded to remain with so valiant a warrior and go with 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 lor 
 
 him to his tribe. His arrows were thenceforth accounted to be 
 invincible by reason of Manitou's favor, as no man else could kill 
 so dread a demon as a vampire. 
 
 From Overlook to Plattekill Clove is perhaps the most beautiful 
 drive the mountains afford. The trees have been cut away at inter- 
 vals, giving glimpses of the valley below. The road runs all along 
 the ridge of the mountain, and on that delicious September day, 
 when the travellers, with whom our interest lies at present, passed 
 over it, all the energies of nature seemed to have been put forth 
 
 BEFORE OLD MOUNT HOUSE. 
 
 to adorn it. A clamp wood odor arose like incense, and the ground 
 beneath the trees was a painted carpet of lush green moss 
 sprinkled with gray-haired lichens, while the bloodroot and an 
 occasional fallen leaf, turned gray, red, or yellow, made just the 
 touches of color that the picture needed. The birches, those 
 vestal virgins of the woods, stood, white and still, gleaming far 
 within the cool forest depths, and the maples were donning their 
 gay raiment, for October was not far away. When will the 
 people who flock hither from cities learn that the high festival 
 
I02 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 time up here is later, when all the gorges and mountain sides are 
 
 one blaze of color? They see it from the river as they come 
 
 down from a late sojourn at Lake George or Saratoga ; they cry 
 
 out in delighted surprise at the wonderful rose-purple in which the 
 
 Cats kills are 
 
 bathed, but they k. A^H 
 
 pass on down, 
 
 content without 
 
 nearer inspection. 
 
 Think how they 
 
 
 look when Indian sunmier has 
 
 crept up the cloves and some 
 
 wise old habitue goes follow- 
 
 ikji inor after to see the wonders 
 
 ^^^^p?^S that are there. The glory that 
 
 ^^^^g^ -^fl covers them then micrht well- 
 
 nigh turn one's head with a 
 
 STYLES GORGE AND I'l'ipir KocK. kind of dclirium of beauty, 
 
 and yet the great caravansaries of hotels are closed, the summer 
 
 boarder has departed, and silence reigns in the rocky fastnesses. 
 
 On this day of which I write, some regret was expressed that 
 travellers could not find bed and board here in the wonderful 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE, 
 
 103 
 
 season of turning- leaves. Everybody said that "next year it must 
 be managed, really next year we must come in October." 
 
 Hi' 
 
 -7/ \ 
 
 WW 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 "m^ 
 
 poet's bench, overlook. 
 
 Here let us take up Miss Rutherford's journal, an adjunct tc 
 her travelling gear the which she cared for most religiously ; "for," 
 said she, " if I do not write it up each day I should get all these 
 
104 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 waterfalls, and ravines, and devil's cauldrons, and kitchens, 
 and stairways so inextricably confused that five years hence I 
 should find myself describing Haines' Falls as running down Over- 
 look Mountain, or that dreadful ' Black Chasm ' we went to on 
 our way to Plattekill Clove, as yawning under the old Mountain 
 House." 
 
 
 ^■<.mhij/^'~ 
 
 Thursday, Sept. 
 ^-?^.-Enjoyed a charm- 
 ing day in true moun- 
 taineer fashion, but 
 feel the effects of the 
 climbing and walking, 
 in a strained sensation 
 all over the body and 
 a strono^ desire to eet 
 to bed. We becrun the 
 day in fine spirits, for 
 this air invigorates like 
 wine, and one danger 
 of the place is said to be 
 this very effect of light- 
 ness and elasticity that 
 comes to you, for, under 
 LOVER'S RETREAT, OVERLOOK. ij-g stimulatino" in flucuce 
 
 many people overtax themselves, and pay the penalty when 
 again on terra Jirma. (There, I still preserve the delusion of walk- 
 ing on air, that has haunted me all day !) 
 
 We started immediately after breakfast on our tramp, leaving 
 groups of less enterprising pleasure seekers lounging about the 
 piazzas, or discoursing after the usual manner of tourists on the 
 cliff. How far you can see with and without a glass seems to 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 105 
 
 absorb the entire attention of most people, and a condition of 
 atmosphere in which the capitol at Albany (by a slight stretch of 
 imagination) can be seen from a cliff half a mile away, eno-enders 
 more excitement than a fine sunset or a mist-mantled moon. 
 This latter sight we were permitted to behold this evening. 
 Little breezes tore the mist into shreds and patches, and blew it 
 away in soft clouds from the face of Diana. It was a noiseless, 
 mysterious batde between the gods of the upper air, and the seat 
 of war seemed not fifty feet from our faces. She has conquered, 
 
 has my lady Moon, for I could not have left the cliff with the battle 
 undecided, and now sails serenely over our heads, turning the few 
 clouds that still fly by beneath us into effulgent silver down, an 
 intangible substance belonging to some other world, whereon, for 
 aught I know, the old deities may once more ride or recline when 
 these watchful mortal eyes of ours are closed. 
 
 Mr. Grant said we must find a point below the ledge where a 
 wonderful view could be 2!"Ot, but he was n't sure whether it was 
 
io6 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 "Inspiration Rock" or "Turtle Rock," or a "devil's kitchen"; 
 on second thoughts, he felt positive it was a poet's something. 
 Somebody asked if he was sure it was n't " Lovers' Retreat." 
 There did not seem to be any reason for Polly Perkins to blush. 
 If any thing could be wanting to complete the vulgarity of that sort 
 of remark, it is for some inconsequent woman to blush. 
 
 I should like to stay here a week, for these beautiful walks 
 need a more careful inspection, though I stored up enough loveli- 
 
 
 >« 
 ^y 
 
 
 J I 
 
 (OVERLOOK PLAYGROUND. 
 
 ness in my mind to last a long time. We came home at noon 
 with great armfuls of maiden-hair fern, and harebells, and sweet 
 fern, and partridge vines, not to mention the birch-bark and queer 
 fungi and lichens. No doubt we shall throw them all away as too 
 burdensome before we reach New York. I am already filled with 
 regret at despoiling the v;oods of them. 
 
 After dinner we lounged awhile, and then w^itched a game of 
 billiards ; this, with a short walk and an hour in the bowling-alley, 
 finished the day. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 107 
 
 Of all the views, I suppose nothing here is so wonderful as 
 that from the tower, thouo-h some little feelinof I had of dissatisfac- 
 tion with it seemed to be expressed in a remark of our Artist — •' It 
 lacks foreground." You want a near object of comparison. 
 
 Foreground or not though, it inspires one with a sort of exalta- 
 tion, and quite justifies Mr. Grant's remark : " I should think a 
 race of artists ought to spring up here, if nature has any influence 
 over the spirit of man." 
 
 I found a prom- 
 ising instance of his 
 theory to-day in a 
 boy — a bare-legged, 
 bie-hatted, indio^e- 
 nous boy — who was 
 drawing pictures with 
 a stone on the smooth 
 surface of a flat rock ; 
 but, alas ! for the in- 
 spiration of the 
 mighty hills, I found 
 on closer inspection ^°^ ^^^'^^ ^^"'^^)- 
 
 he was trying his " prentice hand " on a caricature of a distraught 
 looking youth from the hotel, whom he had set down as an 
 amateur poet ! 
 
 Friday, Sept. 2jd. — Enjoyed a delightful drive across the 
 mountains this morning, and down through Plattekill Clove, from 
 there to Saugerties, taking in Caatsban on the way. The Plattekill 
 is to my mind the finest clove of all, and nothing could be finer 
 than that one grand sweep — the Horse-Shoe Curve, they call it, I be- 
 lieve, — and the view from there is very fine out through the gorge, 
 showing a section of the valley — that is, if one has the heart to look, 
 

 -4 'v\\> 
 
 io8 
 
 LI.ACK CHASM. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 109 
 
 1 
 
 which, I confess, I had not. With our was^on creakinof and rock- 
 ing on the very edge of a yawning chasm, I coukl do Httle else 
 but shut my teeth and pray that the brakes would hold as we went 
 lurching" down the mountain. 
 
 Captain Oldbore 
 said we must turn out 
 of our way a little to 
 pass through Caats- 
 ban with its old stone 
 church and its histori- 
 cal associations. We 
 were very glad to 
 adopt this suggestion, 
 for we had plenty of 
 time before the even- 
 \x\<y boat for New 
 York left the dock at 
 Saugerties, and we 
 were very loath to 
 leave this lovely coun- 
 try. So we turned 
 northward, still keep- 
 ing toward the sides, 
 and watching" with re- 
 gretful eyes the grand terrace fallTplattekill. 
 
 old mountains as their softened outlines receded behind us. 
 
 Caatsban is well worth while seeing, with its old stone houses 
 and the church of ancient Dutch build. The latter is not much to 
 look at now since the ruthless people have "modernized" it, 
 putting a white painted wooden steeple on it, but as it stands 
 facing the road which climbs a gradually ascending hill, its position 
 
THE UEl.l. HOLE. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 is very imposing, and nothing could be prettier than the picture 
 one readily conjures up of the congregation, A. D. 1760, as they 
 wended their way up this very road to morning service in quaint 
 Holland costume. 
 
 Before you come to the 
 church there is an old stone 
 house, higher than ordinary, 
 built a little way back from 
 the road, with that quaint 
 look at the gable end, of a 
 woman with her hair parted 
 in the middle and smoothed 
 meekly down over her ears. 
 The front yard is a grove of 
 high poplars ; altogether the 
 place has an old-world haunt- 
 ed look, and even its ghosts 
 would seem foreign fancy. 
 Think of all the ghosts talk- 
 ing Dutch, as they must, of 
 course, in this region. 
 
 From Caatsban we struck 
 down toward the river road 
 to take in a great dreary 
 marsh called "The Grot Vly" or " Big Swamp." I do not know 
 whether that is good Dutch or not ; it is the vernacular. John 
 Grant gave us a story about it which I append here to my journal 
 as a souvenir of this interesting place. 
 
 I'LAITKKILL Cl^OVE. 
 
112 777^ LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 THE GROT VLY'S VICTIM. 
 
 ^ i HOOSING the low level ridges that skirt the foot 
 
 of the Catskills, with a discernment un- 
 rivalled in the history of early Dutch high- 
 ways, runs the " Old King's Road," as it 
 has been called since it served the post- 
 r carriers in old colony days. The com- 
 parative directness of that road and its easy 
 rises, you will never realize till you have been obliged to make 
 a hurried journey across country by any of the ways laid out 
 by the old settlers, and then you will find yourself obliged 
 to wind over hills and through valleys in a way that pro- 
 duces very picturesque impressions of the scenery, but equally 
 vivid convictions concerning the deserts of that Dutchman who 
 made the journey ten miles long, when, as the bird flies, it was but 
 four. However, nobody has any business to be in a hurry in this 
 region, and, with human nature's true perversity, you resent in this 
 case the very directness of the route that hurries you past such 
 vistas of peaceful fields and winding streams. 
 
 Nothing could be lovelier than the views of the mountains 
 toward the west, or of the Hudson River on the east, that open 
 between trees or around jutting corners of the curious formation 
 of rocks, whose perpendicular sides guard the way for a long 
 distance like fortresses. Along this highway in the stirring times 
 of the Revolution, passed many and strange figures — Whig and 
 Tory, Indian and British spy, stout vrouws and blushing maidens, 
 on errands of loyalty or treachery, love or hate, and each carried a 
 weapon of defence, whether blunderbuss, pistol, or knife, hidden in 
 the bosom. The whole way is rife with memories of old days, and 
 the aroma of Indian superstition. 
 
 On a commanding hill stands Caatsban church, with a settle- 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 113 
 
 ment of farm-houses clustered about it much as chickens huddle 
 about the mother hen for protection. Over toward the river 
 stretches away the black waste of marsh called by the Dutch 
 the Grot Vly, holding in its bottomless depths one of those Indian 
 demons that the Dutch held in very respectful veneration, for 
 heathen deities of fell power. This particular old deity seemed to 
 have a special love for young girls, and more particularly for those 
 who were already held in like estimation by the more attractive 
 gallants of flesh and blood. Certain it is that on certam nights of 
 the year he was wont to rise up from his watery bed, when woe 
 to the luckless woman, beloved of man, who mi^ht be wanderino- 
 near ! 
 
 At the time of which I write, Burgoyne was advancing on 
 Saratoga, the British were holdino- New York, and this broad 
 river-valley was one of the most important keys to unlock the 
 problem of the Revolution. The staunch Dutch were holding out 
 well, keeping strict watch of Tory neighbors, lest some messenger 
 should get up or down the valley to effect a junction of British 
 forces, but rumors finally came that Brant was advancing toward 
 the mountains from Niagara, and that thought brought dismay to 
 even their stout hearts. 
 
 One September evening the mountains were hurling down 
 shot and shell of a mightier kind than human hand could devise. 
 The thunder and liorhtnino- came boomins: and flashincf throuofh 
 the clove as if the great Manitou who dwells in their secret 
 places had determined to vent his wrath on the dwellers below. 
 In vain, however, did they besiege the parsonage where Domine 
 Van Vlierden and his family sat around the great fire in peace and 
 safety. The smoke from the good man's pipe ascended the blaz- 
 ing cavern on one side the hearth, while on the other side sat his 
 broad wife, with placid, close-capped face, knitting stockings that 
 
114 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 might have been meant for a giant, so wide in the calf and long in 
 the leg were they. The Domine was one of those pastors who 
 played so important a part in the early history of New York 
 State, and who were to the people of their respective parishes at 
 once pastor, magistrate, physician, and military leader. He had 
 a shrewd eye, and beneath his outer appearance of lethargy was a 
 quick brain. With an education acquired at Leyden, and a man- 
 ner and method of speech above his parishioners, he readily 
 gained over them a great power, and ruled his people, from Catskill 
 to Kingston and far beyond the mountains, with the undisputed 
 sway of an autocrat, while his wife, styled by the country people 
 the " Yvrouw," ruled him in turn. The two children crouchino- in 
 the corner of the great settle were miniature copies, in face, figure, 
 and dress, of their parents. 
 
 " It will be a great storm, Yvrouw," said the domine, using the 
 vernacular then growing among the North River Dutch; " best get 
 te kindern to bet." 
 
 As the wife rose to carry out this suggestion, a terrific blast 
 shook the door on its great brass hinges, threatening to tear apart 
 the two halves, and she paused as if listening to a knock. Just 
 then another and fiercer blast drove in the upper door, bringing 
 with it a hurricane of wind and rain, and displaying the figure 
 of a woman thrown in strong relief against the outer blackness by 
 the rays from the fire. 
 
 " Got in de himelin ! " cried the now frightened Yvrouw, while 
 the children shuddered and shrank still farther into their corner. 
 The domine, however, went and pulled in the stranger and barred 
 the door. Who was she ? some spirit driven down the wild clove 
 in the storm, or a spy '^ To the wife and children she seemed the 
 former, but the domine's darkened brow gave out his suspicions 
 of the latter. The slaves from the outer kitchen, havino- heard the 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE, 115 
 
 clatter and bang, were now chattering and crowding in the inner 
 door-way, their eyes wide with terror, while the children's fairly 
 started from their heads, and they held up their arms before their 
 faces as a defence. 
 
 Something absurd in the picture before her seemed to strike 
 the new-comer, for glancing around her she lifted her head, letting 
 fall the hood of her cloak, and laughed a long silvery peal, very 
 unlike the usual " haw-haws " of the country side. This seemed 
 to break the spell, for a torrent of questions was now poured forth, 
 to all of which there was no answer save a smiling shake of the 
 head and a reiterated inquiry for " Pierre Dubois." Now Pierre 
 Dubois was a French Huguenot who lived a mile farther on the 
 road, and nothing could be done that night but get the poor girl 
 dry and then to bed, waiting for morning to bring Pierre, when he 
 was expected to join the domine in a trip to the part of the parish 
 that lay beyond the mountains. So the blacks were sent off to 
 their quarters, the children hurried to bed, and then dry gar- 
 ments brought to replace the foreign-looking clothes in which the 
 stranger was clad. As she sat by the fire drying her wavy black 
 locks, the domine eyed well her beautiful face with the soft eyes 
 and the brilliant expression, thinking she was not at all like Pierre 
 or Pierre's sort of folk. Pierre was short and stooping, while her 
 figure was slim and tall with a sort of commanding carriage. As 
 for the Yvrouw, she watched over the clickine needles, beingf rather 
 distrustful of her strange appearing, illuminated so against the 
 outer blackness ; and then her very clothes were uncanny, the 
 red-lined cloak and high-waisted, clinging skirts being any thing 
 but Dutch in their pretty fashioning. 
 
 Morning brought light on the dark subject. The Yvrouw was 
 awakened at early dawn by the same ringing laughter that startled 
 her the previous night, and hurrying down stairs she found Pierre 
 
ii6 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 already arrived, and talking with the stranger in the open door- 
 way. The man's face was a picture of horrified surprise; he stood 
 stupidly staring, but the lady came forward and kissed the Yvrouw's 
 hand saying, in her sweet voice, •' Bon jour, madame ! " Charmed, 
 in spite of her stolid self, at the winning gesture, the Yvrouw looked 
 inquiringly at Pierre, who seemed to have so scanty a welcome 
 for this traveller. The girl spoke to him quickly in French, and 
 this seemed to rouse his wandering wits. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said hurriedly, "this will be my — my niece, your 
 ladyship — I mean Yvrouw, who has come all the Avay from Paris 
 to me here, and she was brought last night from Sopus in all the 
 storm ! Mon dieu, mon dieu ! " he said, throwing up his hands, 
 " to think that the winds and rains of heaven should dare to beat 
 on that head ! " 
 
 His wild eesture receiving a warnino- crlance from the head in 
 question, stopped all further speech on his part till soon the 
 domine appeared on the scene. Then it was explained that his 
 niece spoke only French, having, however, a little knowledge of 
 the English, and she wished to teach embroidery and fine needle- 
 work to the women and children as soon as she could learn 
 enough of the languaee. Old Pierre beo^o^ed that she miq-ht 
 remain with the Yvrouw, as she was not used to the hardships 
 and rough living of his family. 
 
 " She came from beautiful Paris, you know, sir, whilst I have 
 lived most of my life in Provence." 
 
 So at last it was all arranged, and Sophie Dubois settled down 
 into the ways of the parsonage, translating herself into a spirit of 
 usefulness. 
 
 •Tt vill be vondershone vat Sophie ken do," said the Yvrouw 
 very soon, " from the domine to te kindern, she vill pe for help- 
 ing us." With her wit and high spirits she soon became the 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 117 
 
 delight not only of the parsonage, but of the whole community, 
 and no husking-bee or frolic was complete without her. She 
 taught them pretty dances and strange foreign games ; she sang 
 sones erave and eav, till tears and lausfhter dwelt too-ether on 
 their honest faces, and yet she never came to be quite one of them- 
 selves. There were limits to her reserve which the boldest could 
 not pass, and there breathed no gallant so bold that he had yet 
 dared to offer her the customary salute when the red ear of corn 
 came up at the husking, or when the sleighing parties jumped over 
 a " kissing-hole " in the road. Her chief charm to these imagina- 
 tive people lay in her gift of story-telling. She was a born racon- 
 teur to the tips of her facile fingers, and in the long winter even- 
 ings, as they gathered about some hospitable hearth, no prize was 
 so coveted as Sophie in one of her happy moods. She was not 
 all sunshine and fair weather though; sometimes she would say not 
 a word for any one, only sit gazing in the fire with wide, sad eyes, 
 and then they would whisper " She vill pe for getting homesick." 
 She asked no sympathy and told nobody her thoughts at such 
 times, but when the mood was right, how she poured forth her 
 treasures of soncr and tale to their waitiuQf ears ! 
 
 No one of them all drank in her charms so eagerly as Garretje 
 Brit, who sat always in a sort of silent worship in the chimney- 
 corner, with knees curved, smoking his evening pipe. Every turn 
 of her perfect head, each quick gesture, each flash of her smile, 
 and tone of her voice when she sang or spoke, passed through his 
 heart like an electric current. He followed her with little unob- 
 trusive services, bringing her flowers and gorgeous October leaves, 
 taking her, when she would suffer it, to church or to the country 
 frolics. Nor was she unconscious of his devotion, but watched 
 him now with amused interest as a mother might regard a divert- 
 ing child, or again repulsed him almost fiercely if his hand chanced 
 
ii8 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 to touch her hair as he clumsily helped her with her cloak. Old 
 Pierre saw all this with growing concern and sometimes spoke to 
 her in her own language words that either caused her to laugh 
 wickedly, or to answer with a haughty air more suggestive of the 
 relation of master and servant than of niece and uncle. 
 
 One night there was a great husking over at the Bught (a 
 " bight" or bend in the river near Catskill), and the young folks, 
 with many of the older, of all the country side, from West Camp 
 to the Van Bergen Patent, in great ark-like pungs, or on horse- 
 back, came riding down to enjoy the fun. There were the Abiels 
 and the Snyders, the Wyncoops and Van Gelders, and the Heer- 
 mans, the Kiersteds, and the Van Ordens, with a sprinkling of 
 Scotch, as seasoning for the polyglot pie, in the persons of the 
 Salisburys and Grants from Leeds-way, while the Huguenot ele- 
 ment was represented by the Leferves, the Freres, and the Eltin- 
 ges. Then there were some Germans from the Palatinate, settled 
 across the river, such as the Allendorphs, the Stickles, and the 
 Hommels. The babel produced by these different nationalities 
 baffles description, for the language of the region had developed 
 into a vernacular in which remained words of each toncrue, but 
 the whole sounded like broken English. The jaw-breaking words 
 flew back and forth like the fast flying ears of corn. The huge 
 raftered barn, the mows piled up with hay, the horses poking their 
 sniffin<Tf noses throuo^h their stall windows, candles stuck here 
 and there, and the groups of jolly Dutch in their quilted petticoats, 
 or knee-breeches and long worsted stockings, all combined to 
 make a picture worthy the brush of some old Holland master. By 
 and by comes the hostess surging along like a great scow among 
 smaller craft, bumping against this one and that one, saying : 
 " Now den once for de victuals, — come eat till you burst, and I 
 wish you may! " Indeed it would seem that the company would 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 119 
 
 need to accomplish some such gastronomic feat if the supper were 
 to be disposed of that night. Great wooden dishes and troughs 
 were piled high with two whole sheep, an entire bear, and smaller 
 piles of chickens, turkeys, sausage, crullers, volichie, apple-butter, 
 and other dainties, all set forth cheek by jowl, and served to each 
 truest on one laro-e dish. One chronicler asserts that often as 
 many as a hundred chickens and an equal number of turkeys and 
 ducks were devoured at these feasts. Sophie Dubois looked on 
 with amused disgust while the supper went on, refusing all refresh- 
 ment but a glass of cider, thereby bringing down on herself the 
 distressed importunities of the hostess and her final indignant 
 despair. After the feast came the dancing, and a meal such as 
 would have incapacitated an ordinary mortal from stirring from his 
 chair, seemed to animate their usually spiritless bodies with an 
 unwonted vivacity. As the fun grew more furious, a luckless 
 wight was emboldened to steal a sly kiss from Sophie where she 
 stood in the shadow res^ardinof the antics on the barn floor. 
 Encirclinof her waist with his arm he reached toward her shrinking 
 face, regardless of her strusforles, when a sound " thwack ! " laid 
 him sprawling on the floor, where Garretje Brit stood over him 
 saying : " Take dat, te gret awkward Onwijzen ! " A great laugh 
 greeted this confusion, and Sophie stole a grateful look at Garretje 
 that caused his heart to bound. Afterward he saw her shiver and 
 heard her mutter between her closed teeth: " The impertinent! 
 The dog! " He could not help rejoicing that the lady of his love 
 was unlike these girls with their indiscriminate favors, and yet why 
 should the peasant niece of Pierre Dubois be so proud ? And 
 what made old Pierre himself look just now as if he had seen some 
 impious thing done, as if the brass-bound Bible itself had been 
 hurled from the pulpit ? After all, one should not give one's self 
 airs. 
 
I20 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 So the winter wore away in work and occasional pleasuring, 
 and in the spring" with the blossoms and birds, and the warm south 
 winds came also rumors of trouble in the air. Brant was surely 
 on his way from Niagara with a great band of Indians, and two or 
 three Enelish officers. The men of the rec^ion were enlisted in 
 the army of the rebellion, as the British called it, but Garretje 
 Brit had been one of a little company who stayed at home, scenting 
 afar off the danger that was to come upon these unprotected 
 firesides in the method of attack the mother country afterward 
 adopted, when she set a price on Whig scalps and sent the red 
 men to harry the homes left unguarded under the mountains. 
 
 As the summer passed, Sophie's face grew thinner and paler, 
 and she seemed at times possessed by a feverish expectation 
 of some event that was to come. At such times the color would 
 come back to her cheeks, and her step regain its spring as she 
 wandered restlessly through the meadows. Garretje warned her 
 against these lonely wanderings in vain, she only smiled and paid 
 no heed, so he took to following her at a distance or meeting her 
 at any unexpected turn in the path. Then she would wake up like 
 any sleep-walker, sometimes seeming annoyed at the intrusion on 
 her dreams, at others so kind and sweet that the poor fellow would 
 be in rapture. Once while she stood watching the current of the 
 creek where it winds through the " Vlaats," or flat-lands, Garretje 
 came upon her suddenly, and she looked so sad and dejected 
 with her hands clasped behind her and head bent down, a very 
 picture of despair in the warm sunset light, that his heart was 
 flooded with a sense of her loveliness and loneliness. Something 
 of his feeling burst from him almost unaware. She looked up as 
 if puzzled to make out his meaning, and then seemed interested. 
 Finally her eyes softened and filled with tears, and she put out her 
 hand to stop him. 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 121 
 
 " Oh, no, dear Garretje ! I am not what you think — it could 
 not be — oh, never, never ! " 
 
 He was kneeHng now at her feet, sobbing Hke a child, and she 
 put her hand pityingly on his head. It was a pretty, pathetic 
 picture, but to Pierre Dubois going along with a bundle of rushes 
 on his shoulders it seemed to present some other element, for he 
 stood still a little way off, trembling and scared. Sophie spying 
 him as he stood there laughed aloud at his absurd plight. Poor 
 Garretje started up as if stung, and Sophie cried with a touch of 
 bitterness : " Ah, mon bon Pierre, comme Ics dieus sont tombcs / " 
 The next moment she w^as hurrying after her would-be lover, 
 ■calling in her sweetest accents : " Please, oh please forgive me ! " 
 
 Old Pierre collected his wits and resumed his journey, mutter- 
 ing to himself : " We are all but dogs in her proud eyes, and yet 
 I would serve her mother's child to my death! " 
 
 One autumn niMit when the leaves had turned their brightest 
 tints, and the air had a frosty bite in its touch, some neighbors had 
 gathered about the domine's hearth to listen to Sophie's songs 
 and tales. A wealth of warmth and light poured from the vast 
 chimney to meet the path of the moonbeams on the polished floor, 
 playing strange freaks on its way with the stolid faces it touched 
 as it passed. The young girl was in a strangely excited mood, 
 and her eyes shone like stars, while her stories were all of love 
 and war and danger. 
 
 At the conclusion of one that was all about " a warrior bold 
 with spurs of gold," who had rescued his lady from her enemies, 
 and died at last in her service, she exclaimed : " So it was they 
 loved in old Provence a hundred years ago ! Never then did a 
 knight break faith or forijet — oh, no ! — and it was reward enoueh 
 to die for love ! " 
 
 " It vass petter to die in te service of Got," said Garretje, sol- 
 
122 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 emnly ; " end, pesides, there pe no maids any more who can lofe 
 much." 
 
 She turned her eyes from the fire with an impatient Httle 
 frown, as if a child had interrupted. 
 
 " It was the nobles, Garretje. You comprehend it not — how 
 could you ? But, piff ! " with a scornful wave of her hands, as she 
 unclasped them from her knees where she sat on the low stooU 
 " 't is no more so. I dare swear there was this many a year in all 
 fair France but one maiden who would cross an ocean to meet a 
 lover, and he — perhaps," with a break in her voice, — " he would 
 fail her! " 
 
 Then she drew back in the shadow and leaned her head 
 against the chimney jamb, looking sadly toward the window, 
 where the Virginia creeper outside fluttered back and forth in the 
 breeze, tracing graceful arabesques on the tiny moonlit panes. 
 Garretje, repulsed, put in his proper place, gazed on her longingly 
 across the path of the fire-light, and it seemed to him an impassa- 
 ble gulf, with her face far off and faint on the other side, and her 
 eyes looking ever away into another world than his. Would she 
 hear him if he called to her ? 
 
 Old Pierre, too, was watching her coverdy, and saw her start 
 as if she saw more than the vine on the pane, and when she soon 
 after slipped quiedy out of the room, he stole after her, but she 
 was nowhere to be seen. He took up his position by the hall 
 door and waited patiendy till she came back into the hall-way, 
 with flushed cheeks and glad eyes. 
 
 " You look as if you had seen into heaven," he said, eying her 
 narrowly ; " and who was the man I saw out there ? " 
 
 " Pcut-ci7'e," shrugging her shoulders, " it may be that I have 
 just caught a glimpse through the blessed gates ; but, old Pierre, 
 you are fast losing your sight. As for the man, you saw your 
 shadow ! " 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 123 
 
 " My shadow wears no red coat, mademoiselle." 
 
 " CicL how you are stupid ! " bending low to look into his old 
 face with mocking eyes. " May not I wear my coat reiiverse — 
 wrong-side-out, if so it pleases me ! " 
 
 So she slipped back to her low seat beside the Yvrouw's knee, 
 just as Tobias Terwilliger was finishing a legend of the Grot Vly 
 (Great Swamp) that stretches away behind the hill toward the 
 river. 
 
 " Efen yet," said the old Boerman, " it is one moon of te year, 
 end dis vill pe te moon, ven if any maid belofed py a youth valks 
 by its edge, a gret arm rises outen te Vly end teks her down, but 
 it must be at twelf of de clock at night ! " 
 
 An awe-struck silence here ensued, broken only by the puffs 
 of the pipes, the click of knitting needles, and the sonorous 
 breathing of one old man who had gone to sleep. 
 
 " Do you all believe that ? Do you Garretje Brit ? " 
 
 It was Sophie Dubois who spoke, and many eyes turned 
 toward her, remembering for many a long year how she looked 
 that night. There was about the girl an indefinable charm or fas- 
 cination, something that drew all hearts and yet was independent of 
 her beauty — something that comes not " by favor of blue eyes, or 
 black, or brown," and yet her face was so lovely to-night that to 
 these people its wonderful illuminated expression was wellnigh 
 supernatural. On the hand she held up, palm outward, to guard 
 her cheek from the blaze, there glowed a ruby heart. 
 
 " You believe that, Garretje, I ask ? " And he was fain to 
 reply : " I shall not scorn to beleef what my fathers held to be 
 truth." 
 
 Tall and slim she rose up in the fire-light, standing for a 
 moment as if in thought, with her hands clasped loosely in front of 
 her, then as if she had reached some inward decision, she bent 
 
124 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 over the good Yvrouvv and kissed her three times. Rising, she 
 looked around on the group, and with a wave of her hand said, 
 as a queen might have addressed her subjects : •' Good people — 
 good-night ! " As she passed out behind Garretje, a soft touch on 
 his shoulder and the odor of a jasmine flower falling in his lap, 
 made his head swim and his heart stand still under the sweet 
 electric influence of her presence, then she was gone. " Adieu, 
 my good and dear Garretje ! " Was it only a fancy, or did she 
 whisper that in his ear ? 
 
 Next morning, as he went over the hills at early dawn, toward 
 the BuQ^ht, he still thousfht he heard the voice in his ears, but now 
 it seemed to come from the Grot Vly, calling softly, " Adieu, O 
 my Garretje, adieu ! " Drawn almost irresistibly toward the 
 swamp, he walked aimlessly along the shores where the morning 
 vapors came pouring off in a rose-tinted cloud. Wrapped in 
 his dream, he saw and heard naught but the face and the voice of 
 the previous night, though all the woods were waking up to life, 
 and flapping crows were calling hoarsely through the fog, while 
 the whole world was turning to rose and gold. Now his feet were 
 tripping in some soft thing like a garment, and stooping, he picked 
 up a woman's cloak lined with red. A cry went echoing through 
 the woods that startled all the birds and sent the crows screaming 
 back over the Vly, while Garretje fell prone upon the ground, in 
 his great loss and sorrow. 
 
 The news of Sophie Dubois' awful fate, drawn into the Grot 
 Vly by the Indian demon, spread throughout the country, bringing 
 sorrow to all, but old Pierre and his indifference were so shameful 
 that the domine himself was drawn to remonstrate. No word did 
 he answer, however, to the charge, but this : " Domine, 't is 
 no time for bewailing ; dey say Brant is on South Mountain, and 
 a British spy escaped last night, going right through our midst to 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 125 
 
 de river, to join de ship Vulture de British have brought to anchor 
 down by Sopus ! " 
 
 " Got in de himelen ! " cried the domine, " mount a horse den, 
 end rouse de country, vile I puckle on my sword end get dat 
 mihtia to de church ! " 
 
 So the old church was turned into barracks and such drilling 
 of raw recruits, such cleaning of old weapons, and such gun prac- 
 tice, was never witnessed before or since. 
 
 During the years that followed till peace was declared, and the 
 British evacuated New York, so much of hardship and sorrow 
 came to these people of Caatsban, that poor Sophie's fate was 
 seldom spoken of, but at last in the quiet time succeeding peace, 
 there came to the Yvrouw a letter with a great armorial seal half 
 covering one side. It was signed " Sophie Montmorenci-Sack- 
 ville," and it thanked the good Yvrouw, in many graceful and 
 fervent phrases, for her great kindness to the writer, who had fled 
 from her home in France and from her father, the Marquis de 
 Montmorenci, to join her lover in America. The lover who was 
 forbidden her was an officer in the English army, hence an enemy 
 to her family. Colonel Sackville had come from Canada under the 
 guidance of Brant, and had joined her, as previously arranged 
 between them, at Caatsban, fleeing thence with her to the ship 
 Vulture down the river, where they were married. She had 
 purposely deceived them as to her fate, the better to protect her 
 husband in his dangerous flight. She wished to be kindly remem- 
 bered to old Pierre Dubois who had " helped me in grateful mem- 
 ory of my mother, on whose family estates in Provence he had 
 formerly lived as a dependent ; likewise to Garretje Brit, whose 
 friendship I shall ever cherish as a valued possession." With the 
 letter came also a chest filled with presents from Colonel Sackville 
 to " my wife's kind friends and protectors," among which was a store 
 
126 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 of finery for the good Yvrouvv Van Vlierden, much too grand for 
 her simple tastes and frugal life. The gowns and laces were laid 
 away in lavender and linen, and handed down to her descendants. 
 They came finally into the possession of the Myer family of Saug- 
 erties, where in '82 they were destroyed in a burning farm-house. 
 As for Garretje Brit he would accept none of the fine presents, 
 but when he died years after, a lonely old man, they found about 
 his neck a little locket hanging from a cord, and when they opened 
 it, there was only a shrivelled flower exhaling a faint odor of jas- 
 mine. 
 
 Passing through Saugerties we saw some more fine old Dutch 
 houses, and were surprised to find the town so large and flourish- 
 ing ; some of the streets were very pretty with their high-arching 
 shade trees and smooth lawns, all kept carefully fenced, however. 
 I was curious to see more of the town, said to be so proud of its 
 Dutch ancestry, and was much interested in the names, scores of 
 them with a jaw-breaking Dutch sound, and the old spelling pre- 
 served intact. As for the name of the town itself, all the informa- 
 tion I procured seemed to indicate its Dutch extraction. The 
 tract on which the town was built belonged to a sawyer, "sager," 
 who on account of his small size was called " sager-tje," the affix 
 " tje " being a diminutive often found in their names, the possessive 
 
THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 127 
 
 added to this word then made it " sajertje's," the property of the 
 little sawyer. 
 
 I don't know why, but somehow the personality of that little 
 sawyer has grown to be of intense interest to me, and indeed I 
 went out to the little creek called " Sagers-kill," or as they have it 
 now " Sau-kill," where his old mill stood, and where now a grist 
 mill grinds its daily task. 
 
 I fancied that he came out on the bridge (there must surely 
 have been a bridge then, before this modern iron thing was 
 thought of), and smoked his pipe to the rosy sunsets, while 
 his eyes wandered far over the valley toward the mountains all 
 aglow with the evening light. No doubt his thoughts were more 
 of work and gain than of the transfiguration that had come to 
 those distant hills, but I like to think his slow Dutch mind was 
 penetrated with some of the wonder of the picture. 
 
 There was much to admire in those ancestors of ours, and 
 much to be proud of and grateful for. Such abiding strength was 
 ingrained in their distinctive traits that they seem to have been 
 impressed on the faces of the race to this day, so that in these 
 places where the Holland blood predominates you can now and 
 then read in the passing countenances the old pluck, the bravery 
 that resisted to the death, the unswerving honesty, and, most 
 prominent of all, the even-tempered but unyielding and mulish 
 obstinacy. 
 
 Alas, that I must write that ugly little word finis to this 
 most perfect of pilgrimages ! 
 
 We watched from the deck of the nieht boat the last lino-erinof 
 rays of sunset behind those enchanted hills, and then turned 
 doleful faces to each other to be commiserated on the close of our 
 holiday. I heard Polly say in her breathless, excited way to Mr. 
 
128 
 
 THE LAND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 John Grant : " Oh. if I could have but one wish granted in all this 
 world, I should wish for one of those mountains to be transported 
 to some spot where I could always see the sun set behind it from 
 my window ! " 
 
 " I know what I should wish for, if I had but one wish," 
 answered her companion. 
 
 " What would that be ? " 
 
 The answer to this leading- question was too low for my 
 ears to catch, but I suspect that two young people in our 
 party found something in that magical region of the Catskills 
 that is to them, at least, as rare, and far more precious than 
 Manitou's treasure. 
 
 We consoled ourselves later in the evening by listening' 
 to Mr. Grant's reading of that prettiest of all American tales, 
 so familiar to us all, Irving's " Rip Van Winkle." As it formed 
 the prologue to our summer idyl, acting as the inspiration from 
 which our journey sprung, it shall be its epilogue, and never again 
 can I doubt its truth, for have I not been there ; have I not sat in 
 Rip's chair, and seen the print of his gun on the rock ! 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker, From Irving s 
 
 " Sketch- Booky 
 
 By Woden, God of Saxons, 
 
 From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday, 
 
 Truth is a thing that ever I will keep. 
 
 Unto thyike day in which I creep into 
 
 My sepulchre— Cartwright. 
 
 Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember 
 the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the 
 great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the 
 river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the sur- 
 rounding country. Every change of season, every change of 
 weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in 
 the magic hues and shapes of these mountains ; and they are re- 
 garded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. 
 When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and 
 purple, and print their bold oudines on the clear evening sky ; but 
 sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will 
 o-ather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the 
 last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of 
 
 glory. 
 
 At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager may have de- 
 scried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle 
 roofs gleam among the trees just where the blue tints of the up- 
 
 129 
 
I30 THE LEGEND OE RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 land melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is 
 a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of 
 the Dutch colonists in the early times of the province, just about 
 the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant 
 (may he rest in peace !) ; and there were some of the houses of the 
 original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow 
 bricks broucrht from Holland, havincr latticed windows and irable 
 fronts, surmounted with weathercocks. . 
 
 In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, 
 to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), 
 there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province 
 of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip 
 Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who fig- 
 ured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and 
 accompanied him to the siege of Christina. He inherited, how- 
 ever, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have 
 observed that he was a simple, good-natured man ; he was, more- 
 over, a kind neighbor, and an obedient, henpecked husband. In- 
 deed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of 
 spirit which gained him such universal popularity ; for those men 
 are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad who are 
 under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, 
 are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic 
 tribulation ; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the 
 world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A 
 termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a 
 tolerable blessing ; and, if so. Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. 
 
 Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good 
 wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took, his 
 part in all family squabbles, and never failed, whenever they talked 
 those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 131 
 
 on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would 
 shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, 
 made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, 
 and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. When- 
 ever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a 
 troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and 
 playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity ; and not a dog 
 would bark at him throughout the neighborhood. 
 
 The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aver- 
 sion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from want of 
 assiduity or perseverance ; for he would sit on a wet rock with a 
 rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without 
 a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single 
 nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours 
 together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and 
 down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would 
 never refuse to assist a neighbor, even in the roughest toil, and 
 was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn 
 or building stone fences. The women of the village, too, used to 
 employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as 
 their less oblieine husbands would not do for them, — in a word, 
 Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own ; but 
 as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it 
 impossible. 
 
 In fact he declared it was of no use to work on his farm ; it 
 was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country ; 
 every thing about it went wrong and would go wrong" in spite of 
 him. His fences were continually falling to pieces ; his cows 
 would either go astray or get among the cabbages ; weeds were 
 sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else ; the rain 
 always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door 
 
132 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 work to do ; so that his patrimonial estate had dwindled away 
 under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more 
 left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the 
 worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood. 
 
 His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged 
 to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, 
 promised to inherit the habits with the old clothes of his father. 
 He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, 
 equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had 
 much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train 
 in bad weather. 
 
 Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of 
 foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white 
 bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or 
 trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a 
 pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in per- 
 fect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears 
 about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was brinofins: 
 on his famil)'. 
 
 Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going ; 
 and every thing he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of 
 household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lec- 
 tures of the kind ; and that, by frequent use, had grown into a 
 habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his 
 eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh 
 volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and 
 take to the outside of the house, the only side which, in truth, 
 belongs to a henpecked husband. 
 
 Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as 
 much henpecked as his master; for Dane Van Winkle regarded 
 them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 133 
 
 an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. 
 True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was 
 as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods ; but what 
 courage can withstand the everduring and all-besetting terrors of 
 a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his 
 crest fell, his tail dropped to the ground or curled between his 
 legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong 
 glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom- 
 stick or ladle he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. 
 
 Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years 
 of matrimony rolled on ; a tart temper never mellows with age, 
 and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with 
 constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when 
 driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the 
 sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which 
 held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a 
 rubicund portrait of His Majesty George III. Here they used to 
 sit in the shade, of a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over 
 village gossip, or telling endless sleepy-stories about nothing. But 
 it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard 
 the profound discussions which sometimes took place, when by 
 chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing 
 traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as 
 drawled by Derrick Van Bummell, the school-master, a dapper, 
 learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigan- 
 tic word in the dictionary ; and how sagely they would deliberate 
 upon public events some months after they had taken place ! 
 
 The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by 
 Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the 
 inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, 
 just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of 
 
134 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 a large tree ; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his 
 movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true, he was 
 rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His ad- 
 herents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly 
 understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When 
 any thing that was read or related displeased him, he was observed 
 to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent, 
 and angry puffs ; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke 
 slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light placid clouds, and some- 
 times taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant 
 vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of 
 perfect approbation. 
 
 From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length 
 routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon 
 the tranquillity of the assemblage, and call the members all to 
 nought ; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, 
 sacred from the darine tonijue of this terrible virao^o, who charq-ed 
 him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness. 
 
 Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair ; and his only 
 alternative to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of 
 his wife was to take gun in hand, and stroll away into the woods. 
 Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and 
 share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he s}mpa- 
 thized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution, " Poor W^olf ! " he 
 would say, '• thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it ; but never 
 mind, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by 
 thee." Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's 
 face ; and, if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the 
 sentiment with all his heart. 
 
 In a long ramble of the kind, on a fine autumnal day, Rij) had 
 unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaats- 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 135 
 
 kill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shoot- 
 inof, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the 
 reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in 
 the afternoon, on a green knoll covered with mountain herbage, 
 that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between 
 the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile 
 of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far 
 below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the 
 reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark here and 
 there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in 
 the blue highland. 
 
 On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, 
 wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from 
 the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflecting rays of 
 the setting sun."^'' For some time Rip lay musing on this scene ; 
 evening was gradually advancing ; the mountains began to throw 
 their long blue shadows over the valleys ; he saw that it would 
 be dark lone before he could reach the villao;e ; and he heaved a 
 heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame 
 Van Winkle. 
 
 As he was about to descend he heard a voice from a distance 
 hallooing, " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip Van Wrinkle ! " He looked 
 around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary 
 flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have 
 deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the 
 same cry ring through the still evening air, " Rip Van Winkle! 
 Rip Van Winkle ! " — at the same time Wolf brisded up his back, 
 and, giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fear- 
 fully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension 
 stealing over him : he looked anxiously in the same direction, and 
 
 * The glen here described is passed by the visitor to the Mountain House during the first 
 mile of ascent in climbing the mountain. It begins near the gate, and ends at the " Shanty. 
 
136 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending 
 under the weight of something he carried on his back. He 
 was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and un- 
 frequented place ; but, supposing it to be some one of the 
 neio'hborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to 
 yield it. 
 
 On nearer approach, he was still more surprised at the singu- 
 larity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built 
 old fellow, with thick, brushy hair and a grizzled beard. His dress 
 was of the antique Dutch fashion : a cloth jerkin strapped round 
 the waist ; several pairs of breeches, the outer one of ample 
 volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches 
 at the knees. He bore on his shoulders a stout keg, that seemed 
 full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach, and assist 
 him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new 
 acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity ; and, mutually 
 relieving each other, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently 
 the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended. Rip every 
 now and then heard long, rolling peals, like distant thunder, 
 that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft between 
 lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused 
 for an instant ; but, supposing it to be the muttering of one of 
 those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain 
 heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to 
 a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular 
 precipices, over the banks of which impending trees shot their 
 branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky 
 and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time, Rip and 
 his companion had labored on in silence; for though the 
 former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carry- 
 ino- a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was some- 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 137 
 
 thing strange and incomprehensible about the unknown that 
 inspired awe and checked famiHarity. 
 
 On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented 
 themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd- 
 looking personages playing at ninepins. They were dressed in a 
 quaint, oudandish fashion : some wore short doublets, others jer- 
 kins, with long knives in their belts ; and most of them had enor- 
 mous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide's. Their 
 visages, too, were peculiar ; one had a large head, broad face, and 
 small piggish eyes ; the face of another seemed to consist entirely 
 of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with 
 a litde red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and 
 colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He 
 was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; 
 he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat 
 and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes with roses in 
 them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old 
 Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village 
 parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the 
 time of the settlement. 
 
 What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these 
 folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the 
 gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were withal the 
 most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Noth- 
 ing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, 
 which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains 
 like rumbling peals of thunder. 
 
 As Rip and his companion approached them they suddenly 
 desisted from their play, and stared at him with such a fixed, 
 statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre counte- 
 nances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote 
 
138 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg 
 into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the com- 
 pany. He obeyed with fear and trembling ; they quaffed the 
 liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game. 
 
 By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even 
 ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, 
 which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He 
 was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the 
 draught. One taste provoked another, and he reiterated his visits 
 to the flagon so often, that at length his senses were overpowered, 
 his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell 
 into a deep sleep. 
 
 On waking he found himself on the green knoll whence he 
 had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes, — 
 it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and 
 twitting among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft and 
 breasting the pure mountain breeze. " Surely," thought Rip, " I 
 have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before 
 he fell asleep, — the strange man with the keg of liquor, the moun- 
 tain ravine, the wild retreat among the rocks, the woe-begone party 
 at ninepins, the flagon. " Oh ! that wicked flagon ! " thought 
 Rip ; " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle ? " 
 
 He looked round for his gun ; but in place of the clean, well- 
 oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying beside him, the 
 barrel encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm- 
 eaten. He now suspected that the grave roisters of the moun- 
 tain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, 
 had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he 
 might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whis- 
 tled after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain ; the echoes 
 repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen. 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 139 
 
 He determined to revisit the scene of the last eveninof's 
 gambol, and, if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog 
 and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, 
 and wanting in his usual activit5\ " These mountain beds do not 
 agree with me," thought Rip ; " and, if this frolic should lay me up 
 with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame 
 Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen ; 
 he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended 
 the preceding evening ; but to his astonishment a mountain stream 
 w^as now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling 
 the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to 
 scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets 
 of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or 
 entangled by the wild grape-vines that twisted their coils and 
 tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his 
 path. 
 
 At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through 
 the cliffs to the amphitheatre ; but no traces of such opening re- 
 mained. The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over 
 which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and 
 fell into a broad, deep basin, black from the shadows of the sur- 
 rounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. 
 He again called and whistled for his dog ; he was only answered 
 by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about 
 a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice, and who, secure in 
 their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's 
 perplexities. What was to be done ? The morning was passing 
 away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved 
 to give up his dog and gun ; he dreaded to meet his wife ; but it 
 would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, 
 shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and 
 anxiety, turned his steps homeward. 
 
I40 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 As he approached the village he met a number of people, but 
 none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had 
 thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. 
 Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he 
 was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of sur- 
 prise, and whenever they cast eyes upon him, invariably stroked 
 their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip 
 involuntarily to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found 
 his beard had grown a foot long ! 
 
 He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of 
 strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing 
 at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized 
 for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very 
 village was altered ; it was larger and more populous. There 
 were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those 
 which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange 
 names were over the doors, strange faces at the windows ; every 
 thing was strange. His mind now misgave him ; he began to 
 doubt whether both he and the world around him were not be- 
 witched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but 
 a day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains ; there ran 
 the silver Hudson at a distance ; there was every hill and dale pre- 
 cisely as it had always been. Rip was sorely perplexed. " That 
 flagon last night," thought he, " has addled my poor head sadly." 
 
 It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his house, 
 which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to 
 hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house 
 gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the 
 doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog, that looked like Wolf, 
 was skulking about it. Rip called him by name ; but the cur 
 snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 141 
 
 cut indeed. " My very dog," sighed poor Rip, " has forgotten 
 me." 
 
 He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van 
 Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and 
 apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his con- 
 nubial fears ; he called loudly for his wife and children ; the lonely 
 chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was 
 silence. 
 
 He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the vil- 
 lage inn ; but it too was gone. A large, rickety wooden building 
 stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them 
 broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the 
 door was painted, " The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." 
 Instead of the tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn 
 of yore, there now was reared a tall, naked pole, with something 
 on the top that looked like a red nightcap, and from it was flutter- 
 ing a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes ; 
 all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the 
 sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had 
 smoked so many a peaceful pipe ; but even this was singularly 
 metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and 
 buff ; a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre ; the head 
 was decorated with a cocked hat ; and underneath was painted, in 
 large characters. General Washington. 
 
 There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none 
 that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed 
 changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, 
 instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He 
 looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, 
 double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke 
 instead of idle speeches ; or Van Bummel, the school-master, dol- 
 
142 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 inor forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, 
 a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was 
 haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens, election, members 
 of Congress, liberty, Bunker's Hill, heroes of seventy-six, and other 
 words that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered 
 Van Winkle. 
 
 The appearance of Rip, with his long, grizzled beard, his rusty 
 fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and the army of women and chil- 
 dren that had gathered at his heels, soon attracted the attention of 
 the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from 
 head to foot with great curiosity. The orator busded up to him, 
 and, drawing him partly aside, inquired on which side he voted. 
 Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but bushy little 
 fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his 
 ear, whether he was Federal or Democrat. Rip was equally at a 
 loss to comprehend the question ; when a knowing, self-important 
 old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the 
 crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he 
 passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one 
 arm a-kimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and 
 sharp hat penetrating as it were into his very soul, demanded in 
 an austere tone what brought him to the election with a gun on 
 his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to 
 breed a riot in the village. 
 
 " Alas, gentlemen ! " cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, " I am a 
 poor, quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the 
 King, God bless him ! " 
 
 Here a general shout burst from the bystanders : " A Tory ! a 
 Tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was 
 with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat 
 restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 143 
 
 demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, 
 and whom he was seeking. The poor man humbly assured him 
 that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some 
 of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern. 
 
 " Well, who are they? — name them." 
 
 Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired: " Where s 
 Nicholas Vedder? " 
 
 There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, 
 in a thin, piping voice: " Nicholas Vedder? why, he is dead and 
 gone these eighteen years. There was a wooden tombstone in 
 the church -yard that used to tell all about him, but that 's rotten and 
 gone too." 
 
 " Where 's Brom Dutcher?" 
 
 " Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war ; 
 some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point ; others say 
 he was drowned in the squall, at the foot of Antony's Nose. I 
 don't know, — he never came back again." 
 
 " Where 's Van Bummel, the school-master? " 
 
 " He went off to the wars too, was a great militia-general, and 
 is now in Conofress." 
 
 Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his 
 home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. 
 Every answer puzzled him, too, by treating of such enormous 
 lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand, — 
 war, Congress, Stony Point. He had no courage to ask after any 
 more friends, but cried out in despair: " Does nobody here know 
 Rip Van Winkle?" 
 
 " Oh ! Rip Van Winkle! " exclaimed two or three ; " Oh, to 
 be sure ! that 's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the 
 tree ! " 
 
 Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he 
 
144 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 went up the mountain ; apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. 
 The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted 
 his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In 
 the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demand- 
 ed who he was, and what was his name ? 
 
 " God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end. " I 'm not my- 
 self, I 'm somebody else; that 's me yonder; no, that 's some- 
 body else got into my shoes. I was myself last night ; but I fell 
 asleep on the mountain, and they 've changed my gun, and every- 
 thing 's changed, and I 'm changed, and I can 't tell what 's my 
 name, or who I am." 
 
 The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink 
 significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There 
 was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old 
 fellow from doing mischief; at the very suggestion of which the 
 self-important man with the cocked hat retired with some precipi- 
 tation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman passed 
 through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She 
 had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, 
 began to cry. " Hush, Rip," cried she, " hush, you little fool ; the 
 old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the 
 mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections 
 in his mind. " What is your name, my good woman? " asked he. 
 
 " Judith Gardenier." 
 
 " And your father's name? " 
 
 " Ah, poor man ! his name was Rip Van Winkle ; it 's twenty 
 years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has 
 been heard of since ; his dog came home without him ; but whether 
 he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can 
 tell. I was then but a litde ofirl." 
 
 Rip had but one question more to ask ; but he put it with a 
 faltering voice : 
 
THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 145 
 
 *' Where 's your mother ? " 
 
 " Oh, she too had died but a short time since : she broke 
 a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedlar." 
 
 There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. 
 The honest man could contain himself no loneer. He caueht his 
 daughter and her child in his arms. " I am your father," cried he, 
 — " Young Rip Van Winkle once, — old Rip Van Winkle now. 
 Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle ? " 
 
 All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from 
 among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it 
 in his face for a moment, exclaimed : " Sure enough, it is Rip Van 
 Winkle ! — it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbor. 
 Why, where have you been these twenty long years ? " 
 
 Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been 
 to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard 
 it ; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues 
 in their cheeks ; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, 
 who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed 
 down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, — upon which 
 there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assem- 
 blage. 
 
 It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter 
 Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He 
 was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of 
 the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient 
 inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful 
 events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at 
 once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. 
 He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his 
 ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always 
 been haunted by strange beings ; that it was affirmed that the 
 
146 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and coun- 
 try, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of 
 the Half Moon, being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of 
 his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the 
 great city called by his name ; that his father had once seen them 
 in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the 
 mountain ; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, 
 the sound of their balls like distant peals of thunder. 
 
 To make a long story short, the company broke up, and re- 
 turned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's 
 daughter took him home to live with her ; she had a snug, well- 
 furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer for a husband, whom 
 Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his 
 back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen 
 leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm ; 
 but evinced a hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else 
 but his business. 
 
 Rip now resumed his old walks and habits ; he soon found 
 many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the 
 wear and tear of time ; and preferred making friends among the 
 rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. 
 
 Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy 
 age when a man can do nothing with impunity, he took his place 
 once more on the bench, at the inn door, and was reverenced as 
 one ot the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old 
 times " before the war." It was some time before he could eet in- 
 to the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend 
 the strange events that had taken place during his torpor, — how 
 that there had been a revolutionary war ; that the country ha(l 
 thrown off the yoke of old England ; and that, instead of being a 
 subject of His Majesty George III., he was now a free citizen of 
 

 THE LEGEND OF RIP VAN WINKLE. 
 
 147 
 
 the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician ; the changes of 
 states and empires made but Httle impression on him ; but there 
 was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, 
 and that was petticoat government. Happily that was at an end ; 
 he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go 
 in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of 
 Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, how- 
 ever, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his 
 eyes ; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to 
 his fate, or joy at his deliverance. 
 
 He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. 
 Doolitde's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some 
 points every time he told it, which was doubtless owing to his 
 having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the 
 tale I have related ; and not a man, woman, or child in the neigh- 
 borhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt 
 the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, 
 and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. 
 The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full 
 credit. Even to this day, they never hear a thunder-storm of a 
 summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick 
 Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins ; and it is a 
 common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neigborhood, when 
 life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting 
 draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon. 
 
LBD U